Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it sufficiently

I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.

When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is very easy to miss it.

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

The writer is the Faust of modern society, the only surviving individualist in a mass age. To his orthodox contemporaries he seems a semi-madman.

To be a woman is a great adventure; To drive men mad is a heroic thing.

Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.

They don't ask much of you. They only want you to hate the things you love and to love the things you despise.

In life it is more necessary to lose than to gain. A seed will only germinate if it dies.

And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?

You ought to follow your inner voice.

O wild dark flower of woman Deep rose of my desire An Eastern wizard made you Of earth and stars and fire.

I understand men much better than most women I know.

The full moon rises. The fog clings to the lowest branches of the spruce trees. The man steps out of the darkest corner of the forest and finds himself transformed into... A monkey? I think not.

There is no German identity without Auschwitz.

My grandmother lives with my mother in a gorgeous house in the San Fernando Valley. I am afforded these luxuries, and I'm very young.

When a country is at war or in economic depression, underdevelopment or tightened security, it sets an affective tone or mood, which seeps through into everyday life via all kinds of channels.

The way that I sing, what I sing about, what I wear, who I am, this is me. I was born this way.

For a tear is quickly dried, especially when shed for the misfortunes of others.

One man pins me to the wall, while with another I walk among the stars