that life had manifested the heart's invisible furies on his face.

His position, like so many of his ilk, was one of uncontested and unearned respect.

uncomfortable as I felt around him, and as much as he repulsed me, it was impossible not to be simultaneously fascinated by him, for his was a consistently intoxicating presence. Whenever I saw him, I...

line came into my mind, something that Hannah Arendt had once said about the poet Auden: that life had manifested the heart's invisible furies on his face.

You know, Emily Dickinson is here too. All she does is write poems about life all the time. The irony! She keeps asking me to read them. I refuse, of course. The days are long enough as it is.

Life is suffering. Until the great day of judgement, when peace and equanimity may be restored for those who are pure of heart and deed.

In school, the other girls formed alliances which always excluded me. They called me names; I will not repeat them here. They made fun of my unshapely body, my pale skin, my untamed hair. I do not...

There are things that are simply there, without disturbing anyone, waiting for them to discover them.

I married up several times. And then across once or twice. And then beneath me. I never quite found the right level somehow. Perhaps I should have married diagonally or in a slightly curved direction.

One day he was perfectly content, playing at home, having three best friends for life, sliding down banisters, trying to stand on his tiptoes to see right across Berlin, and now he was stuck here in...

I felt that this must be what it would be like to be married to someone, a constant back and forth of bickering, watching out for any stray comment in a conversation that might be corrected, anything...

before we learn to feel afraid of things, our bodies know how to do them anyway. It's one of the more disappointing aspects of growing older. We fear more so we can do less.

But they'd never once invited any of the striped pyjama people to dinner.

I have the feeling that I just breathe. And there is a difference between breathing and continuing to live.

"It is very good to pretend to be someone who is not," I told Zoya later in the lobby, when we expected to congratulate him, without knowing very well whether or not those words were flattering. I...

I had told the truth, or a version of it, anyway.

all – were wearing the same clothes as each other: a pair of grey striped pyjamas with a grey striped cap on their heads.

When you sit down with a book, you are separating yourself out of your world for a few hours and getting lost in the story.

irritated by the fact that the rules that always applied to children never seemed to apply to grown-ups at all {despite the fact that they were the ones who enforced them}.

Is it really that easy for the innocent to be corrupted?

if you ask me we are all in the same boat and it's leaking

Something must be done. Not just for him but for all the Pierrots out there. The Führer will destroy the whole country if he's not stopped. The whole of Europe. He says that he is illuminating the...

You have many years ahead of you to come to terms with your complicity in these matters. Just don't ever tell yourself that you didn't know." She released him now from her grip. "That would be the...

He put his face to the glass and saw what was out there, and this time when his eyes opened wide and his mouth made the shape of an O, his hands stayed by his sides because something made him feel...

The people are behind him for now. He has infected them with his hatred. He demands absolute loyalty, and when anyone dares to criticize him, they lose their position. I think he will lead a great...

But there was something about the new house that made Bruno think that no one ever laughed there; that there was nothing to laugh at and nothing to be happy about.

I never really noticed it any more, in the way that one often ignores familiar things, like seat cushions or loved ones.

it seemed like a great adventure, at least at the start.

Some things are just sitting there, waiting to be discovered. Other things are probably better off left alone' Nine-year-old

That one contemplates the sky at night does not make it an astronomer.