The political atmosphere was heating up. In Germany, Hitler blared his message of the super race and of hatred for the Jews into Aryan ears. In Italy… - Nina Graboi

What is assumed to bring happiness and fulfillment often brings the greatest pain. (Epilogue)

Throughout this, I kept paring away at the accretions of my conditioning. I subjected all my beliefs to radical doubt and questioned the values by which I lived. Were they truly mine? Or had they been foisted on me, as on everybody else, by the culture? I had questioned before, but not nearly enough. I discovered new possibilities, alternative approaches to almost everything I had hitherto taken for granted, and I saw the hypocrisy and the phoniness of much that made up the image I presented to the world. I called it "peeling the onion" and worked diligently to free myself of robot prejudices and responses. These inner events took place over a period of years, and they are still going on. (Chapter Nineteen)

"...I love to read books in the original now that I'm getting more fluent in French and English. I like Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Gallsworthy, André Maurois, Somerset Maugham, Colette, H.G.Wells, Hermann Hesse, Thomas Mann, Franz Werfel..." (Chapter Three)