“Boredom is fear's patience. Fear doesn't want to exaggerate. Only on occasion--and fear considers this very important--does it want to know how things stand with me.”

“I'm always telling myself I don't have many feelings. Even when something does affect me I'm only moderately moved. I almost never cry. It's not that I'm stronger than the ones with teary eyes, I'm...”

“No words are adequate for the suffering caused by hunger. To this day I have to show hunger that I escaped his grasp. Ever since I stopped having to go hungry, I literally eat life itself. And when...”

“The Russian commands sound like the name of the camp commandant. Shishtvanyanov: a gnashing and spluttering collection of ch, sh, tch, shch. We can't understand the actual words, but we sense the c...”

“To combat death you don't need much of a life, just one that isn't yet finished.”

“I was all too aware that there's an unspoken law that you should never start to cry if you have too many reasons to do so. I told myself that my tears were due tot he cold, and I believed myself.”

“I have packed myself into silence so deeply and for so long that I can never unpack myself using words. When I speak, I only pack myself a little differently.”

“The constant reprimands made me hyperconscious of my own performance, and so instead of getting rid of self, I had become embedded in the egoism I was supposed to transcend. Now I was beginning to ...”

“Silence is the mother of truth.”

“Silence is a powerful tool.”

“In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it... She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisi...”