I noticed in the front row a small, very pale, almost white man, old, tremendously alert, old in the only way I love old age, namely more alive for a… - Elias Canetti

Say the most personal thing, say it, nothing else matters, don’t be ashamed, the generalities can be found in the newspaper.

When I leaf through Fackel issues of my slave years, I am seized by horror. Anyone released from bondage must feel like this.

Nothing among all human emotions is more beautiful and more hopeless than the wish to be loved for oneself alone. Who are you anyway, next to countless others, to deserve such preference ? We do not want to be interchangeable; let no one be able to pinch-it for us. A figurative unmistakability claiming to be spatial and siritual. As though the earth had only one heaven, and heaven only one earth, we lay claim to the validity of both and, if we have one, we want to be the other. In reality, however, we are filled with planets, and countless heavens open their doors to us.