“The child is mine and Petra's. It's especially important to us because it's the first we know of that definitely does not have my condition." "You mean it isn't ugly?”

“This isn't what I wanted. This isn't what I would have chosen. You must know that. It's important you know that.”

“Darling, my darling, don't think that I don't love you or that I didn't love you, but it's precisely because I love you that I couldn't have become what I am today if you were still here. It's impossible to have a child and despise the world as it is, because that's the world we've put the child into. The child makes us care about the world, think about it's future, willingly join in its racket and its turmoils, take its incurable stupidity seriously.”

“[...] so important to believe in a concept of goodness, even if we make it up ourselves. We don't really make it up. it's there, isn't it?""Oh, yes, it's there," she said. "It's there because we put it there.”

“We have discussed your definition, analyzed its ramifications to a reasonable depth, and accept it," said the expendable."Meaning I gave you what you wanted?""Ambition and desire are human traits. You gave us what we lacked.”

“I would like travelers, especially American travelers, to travel in a way that broadens their perspective, because I think Americans tend to be some of the most ethnocentric people on the planet. It's not just Americans, it's the big countries. It's the biggest countries that tend to be ethnocentric or ugly. There are ugly Russians, ugly Germans, ugly Japanese and ugly Americans. You don't find ugly Belgians or ugly Bulgarians, they're just too small to think the world is their norm.”