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

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.

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.

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.

A clear starry sky looked down upon the dark abodes of humanity. Kerkau castle lay in the deep stillness of night. And yet a woman with fair curly hair buried her head in the pillows and could find no sleep. Tomorrow, ah tomorrow, one she loves, her sweetheart, was to forsake her. A whisper passed (ran) through the gloomy, impenetrable (dark) night

The peasants had sucked me as dry as a failed harvest, I would have perished, I went among men and did not perish.”

You don’t shed any tears over your old trousers when they’re moth-eaten and worn out, you buy new ones, and that is what this world lives off.

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