"His eyes were jet-colored circles of perpetual disapproval."

“I want you to know that should something happen to me, don’t worry about my body. My soul isn’t going to return to it, nor to God. It’s flying straight to you, where it knows it can find you, in Lazarevo. I want to be neither with kings nor heroes, but with the queen of Lake Ilmen.”

“Even bad books are books and therefore sacred.”

Source : "The Tin Drum" by Gunter Grass, translated by Ralph Manheim, Book 1, "Rasputin and the Alphabet", 1961.

“Christ did not come to civilize. He came to save. Civilization is not the solution; it does not destroy the works of the devil. All civilization aims at world improvement, at the gradual elimination of the curse; it is a process of evolution. It is like a man who is suffering from a terrible disease, and the physician who comes to help him gives him a salve to apply. He treats the skin symptoms but the source of the disease he never considers and never touches. Such is a boasted and progressive civilization. It is a delusion.”

“Religion is like music, one must have an ear for it. Some people have none at all.”

Source : Charlotte Mary Mew (1981). “Collected Poems and Prose”, Carcanet Press

“You don't believe it because you don't understand," he said hoarsely. "Prosper was different. He wasn't like other people. He might have hated me, but he loved me too. In his own way. He couldn't help it; not after raising me for all those years." When no one responded – when he saw nothing but expressions of disbelief on the faces around him – Cadel wailed, "He did! He did! I know he did! He only wanted to wreck my life because he wasn't a part of it!" And as sympathetic hands reached out towards him from every corner of the car, Cadel began to cry like someone whose heart was breaking.”

“I've known lots of people that are talented and nothing happens. It's not about talent, it's relentless drive.”

“Too many people realize at the end of their lives that they've taken for granted those who really love them.”

“Roughly 21,000 new brands are introduced worldwide per year, yet history tells us that more than 90% of them are gone from the shelf a year later.”