Berlin Alexanderplatz

Once, gentlemen, when I was, when I was feeling rotten, two Jews helped me by telling stories. They spoke to me, they’re decent people who didn’t know me at all, and then they told me about some Pole or other, and that was only a story but it was very good as well though, very educational for me in that situation I was in. I thought brandy would ha

He was innocent as a new-born lamb. And look, he had so little fear of the world: the greatest, the most powerful people who exist, the most dreadful people, they were his friends: the Saxon Elector, the Crown Prince of Prussia who was later a great war hero, before whom that Austrian woman, the Empress Theresa, trembled on her throne. Zannovich di

Blood must flow, blood must flow, blood must flow in torrents thick and fast.19 “I couldn’t care less. The whole world will fall to bits if you wait long enough, and you along with it. I shan’t dance to that tune again.

In a small hotel, there in a gloomy street, two lovers shot themselves yesterday morning, a waiter from Dresden and a married woman, though they registered in different names.

“You can talk like that for another hundred years. I can only laugh at it.” “Do not laugh. Do not laugh.” “Because you do not know me. Because you do not know who I am. Who Franz Biberkopf is. He’s not afraid of anything. I’ve got fists. Just look here at these muscles of mine.”

“Just speak. How sweetly the birds can sing when they have escaped the weasel. Yet there are many weasels and still the little bird shall sing! You still do not turn your eyes to me. You still do not need to behold me. You hear the babble of men, the clamour of the street, the roar of the tramway. But only breathe, listen. Amidst it all you shall h

A bee, a wasp, a bumblebee, is flying round on the ceiling above, next to the stovepipe, a perfect miracle of nature in winter. All others of its race, breed, convictions and species are dead, dead already or not yet born; this is the ice age and the lonely bumblebee must survive, it does not know how it came about and why it had to be him.

There were people flocking to him from all directions. He held the key to every heart.

What filthy rotten luck, it’s a flamin’ disaster, I feel like smashin’ the whole world to pulp.