The whole town was a tortuous net in which he was already caught. He would have to slip through the meshes. (chapter III p173) - Anna Seghers

I felt anxious, the way you do when a dream seems too real and at the same time something intangible, imperceptible, tells you that whatever makes you feel happy or sad can never be reality. (chapter 7 p156)

What normally is spread over the span of a lifetime, over a number of years, an exertion of all of one's powers to the breaking point, the relaxing and yielding and painful straining again-all this took place in his mind in the space of an hour-while minutes changed. (Chapter V, p262)

It had all been in vain. The prayers in churches and in mosques-all in vain. The invocations, the appeals to long-forgotten, long-ignored gods-in vain. And their final resistance with knives and teeth-in vain. Cowardice had also been in vain. Hiding, waiting-everything in vain. In vain, too, the promises, the hopes, the unexpected generosity of strangers. Whether their fathers had started plowing only yesterday or their forefathers two thousand years ago-it was all in vain. Men who looked death in the eye as they did life, coldly without blinking, and wore lions' claws made of iron on their belts, their courage was in vain; and in vain did the lion keep his vigil before the palace in the capital city. The conquerors rode astride his back and tore at his mane, yelling and hooting. Everything that had existed before had become incomprehensible. The totality of life and living, because it was suddenly all in vain. The simple yesterday and the day before yesterday that were clear to everyone, and the two thousand years that some men could look back on, the incredible, hazy yet real life, one's own existence from time immemorial-the one as much in vain as the other. If there is not going to be any future, then the past will all have been in vain. (beginning of "The Guide")