Perchance, dear reader, you will then believe that nothing is stranger and madder than actual life, and that this is all that the poet can conceive, … - E. T. A. Hoffmann

She was not too tall, and of a voluptuous build, so that my eyes wandered amid many charms that hitherto had been strangers to them.

Confectioner’ is our name for an unknown but very ghastly power that we believe can do whatever we like to a human being. It is the doom hanging over this small, cheerful nation. And this little nation is so frightened that the mere mention of its name can silence the loudest tumult, as was just proved by the mayor. Each man then stops thinking about earthly matters, about pokes in the ribs and bumps on the head. Instead, he draws into himself and says: ‘What is man and what can become of him?

Who knows, dear Godfather, if you were spruced up like my dear Nutcracker, and if you had on such lovely, shiny ankle boots, who knows if you wouldn’t be as beautiful as he?