“We see now that the abyss of history is deep enough to hold us all.”

“[P]erhaps we are like stones; our own history and the history of the world embedded in us, we hold a sorrow deep within and cannot weep until that history is sung.”

“Our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by.”

“We run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it.”

“...we are of a broad, Karamazovian nature--and this is what I am driving at--capable of containing all possible opposites and of contemplating both abysses at once, the abyss above us, an abyss of lofty ideals, and the abyss beneath us, and abyss of the lowest and foulest degradation.”

“We should never, ever believe life- or history- holds no surprises for us. That way lies arrogance. And arrogance can blind us to the truth . . . Any truth. All truth.”