“Vitality is not the denial of mortality, but the grown-up way of facing it.”

“Is war perhaps nothing else but a need to face death, to conquer and master it, to come out of it alive -- a peculiar form of denial of our mortality?”

“Oh, grown-ups cannot understand,And grown-ups never will,How short the way to fairylandAcross the purple hill.”

“Through this feeling of helplessness suddenly burst a piercing nostalgia for the lost world of childhood. The way it came right up against the heart, that world, and against the face. No indoors or outdoors, only everything touching us, and the grown-ups lumbering past overhead like constellations.”

“The fantastically wasteful prodigality of human tongues, the Babel enigman, points to a vital multiplication of mortal liberties. Each language speaks the world in its own ways. Each edifies worlds and counter-worlds in its own mode. The polyglot is a freer man.”

“There are lots of different ways grown-ups disappear. It's lonely being the one left behind.”