The great modern novel of the comic-pathetic illusion of freedom is Confessions of Zeno .

You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide.

Whenever I look at a mountain I always expect it to turn into a volcano.

There are three things I always forget. Names, faces and... the third I can't remember.

Health doesn't analyze itself, nor does it look at itself in the mirror. Only we sick people know something about ourselves.

Everyone tends to remember the past with greater fervor as the present gains greater importance.

To kill someone, even treacherously is more manly than to wound a friend by betraying his confidence.

It is comfortable to live in the belief that you are great, though your greatness is latent.

Misunderstanding women is a clear sign of scant virility.

Tears throw a veil over our faults and allow us to accuse fate without fear or contradiction.

Everyone remembers his past with greater vividness as the present becomes more important. Dying men in their last delirium are supposed to see their whole life spread out before them.

It must be, I thought, one of the race's most persistent and comforting hallucinations to trust that "it can't happen here" -- that one's own time and place is beyond cataclysm.

I wasn't quite as certain that I knew her soul. When it came right down to it, I wasn't sure she knew me either.

And below the heimongmong, all along the ground, were weeds already spilling out over the edges, running wild in every direction.

Never let yourself get fooled by the same pitcher on the same pitch on the same day.

My implicit faith in nonviolence does mean yielding to minorities when they are really weak.

Most men judge your importance in their lives by how much you can hurt them.

The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is inwardly and desperately drunk with a certain belief.

A little integrity is better than any career.

The sets on 'Defiance' are incredible. I've never really seen a set like this, where the world is so built around us. There's not too much left for us to have to imagine.

We came to enjoy; we are being enjoyed. We came to rule; we are being ruled. We came to work; we are being worked. All the time, we find that. And this comes into every detail of our life.