كانت روحه محطمة لكنها ظلت ترعى أملًا غامضًا - László Krasznahorkai

Faith, thought Eszter . . . is not a matter of believing something, but believing that somehow things could be different; in the same way, music was not the articulation of some better part of ourselves, or a reference to some notion of a better world, but a disguising of the fact of our irredeemable selves and the sorry state of the world, but no, not merely a disguising but a complete, twisted denial of such facts: it was a cure that did not work, a barbiturate that functioned as an opiate.

all seemed very suspect to them how no one seemed to be in control, they weren’t used to this and never would have thought it possible: no hands holding the reins, but of course, someone is holding them, they reassured themselves, absurd to think otherwise, after all this was the Bundesrepublik Deutschland,

Culture, then, only truly becomes culture when it is embodied in someone.