Not being shaved gives me the feeling I’m some sort of plant and I keep involuntarily feeling my chin.
I confessed I knew nothing about art—she based her view on a saying of her mother’s that anyone can respond to a work of art except the cultured philistine. That’s very kind of your mother! I said.
I can’t bear being told what I ought to feel; although I can see the subject under discussion, I feel like a blind man.
I called her a sentimentalist and artsy-craftsy. She called me Homo Faber.
Being alone is the only possible condition for me, since I don't want to make a woman unhappy, and women have a tendency to become unhappy. Being alone isn't always fun, you can't always be in form. M...
War against puerperal fever. Caesarean operations. Incubators for premature births. We take life more seriously than in earlier times.
The demand that we love our neighbor as ourselves contains as an axiom the demand that we shall love ourselves, shall accept ourselves as we were created.
Man kann alles erzählen, nur nicht sein wirkliches Leben; – diese Unmöglichkeit ist es, was uns verurteilt zu bleiben, wie unsere Gefährten uns sehen und spiegeln, sie, die vorgeben, mich zu kennen, s...
I have been serving up stories to some sort of public, and in these stories I have, I know, laid myself bare - to the point of non-recognition. I live, not with my own story, but just with those parts...
Es stimmt nicht einmal, daß ich immer nur mich selbst beschrieben habe. Ich habe mich selbst nie beschrieben. Ich habe mich nur verraten.
Caresses in the evening, yes, but I can’t stand caresses in the morning, and frankly more than three or four days with one woman has always been for me the beginning of dissimulation, no man can stand...
Хората ме уморяват, дори мъжете.
Писането без въображение е труд за прехрана. Добър, ама труд. Ако обаче е само за да си вадиш хляба с него, тогава всъщност бих предпочел да съм дърводелец.
[…] ein guter Abend, mehr als Zeitvertreib. Wenn jeder auf ein paar Gedanken kommt, die er nicht schon gehabt und früher ausgesprochen hat, dank der Gegenwart des andern.
When I woke Herbert, he sprang to his feet. What was the matter? When he saw that nothing was the matter, he started snoring again—to avoid being bored.
What I heard was the usual story: marriage, a child (which I didn’t quite catch, obviously, otherwise I shouldn’t have asked again later on), then the war, a prison camp, return to Düsseldorf and so o...
Wenn ich so allein bin, siehst du, und mich an alles erinnere, das ist das Schlimmste, daß man allein nicht darüber lachen kann, oder dann ist es nur so ein böses und bitteres Lachen, so daß man späte...
To be consistent, those who argue that abortion is unnatural would have to say: no penicillin, no lightning rods, no eyeglasses, no DDT, no radar and so on.
Our journey wasn’t easy, though often curious: I bored her with my experience of life, she made me old by waiting from morning to evening, wherever we were, for my enthusiasm . . .
Ich kann es nicht ausstehen, wenn man mir sagt, was ich zu empfinden habe; dann komme ich mir, obschon ich sehe, wovon die Rede ist, wie ein Blinder vor.