“Without using the word, everyone started forgiving each other again. Just like that, from the no of all nothingness: you have a big tense mess and out of it comes some joy. It must be magic.”

“In a word, live together in the forgiveness of your sins, for without it no human fellowship, least of all a marriage, can survive. Don’t insist on your rights, don’t blame each other, don’t judge or condemn each other, don’t find fault with each other, but accept each other as you are, and forgive each other every day from the bottom of your hearts…”

“"You really should come to the house - one of these days we might die without having seen each other again." - "Since we have to die in any case, what's the use of seeing each other again?"”

“Everyone's life is a mess. We all make mistakes… and not just little slip-ups. Major mistakes that hurt us and other people.”

“You really should come to the house — one of these days we might die without having seen each other again.”

“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.”

“The word friends doesn't seem to stretch big enough to describe how we feel about each other. We forget where one of us starts and the other one stops.”

“Everyone is helping each other out. That's what we do.... You know what happens? Infrastructure might not come through -- but people do come through. We all try to do our best. I know we just got power back in one of our restuarants, and I know there are a lot of people without power. So, we invited a thousand people with children to come over and have a hot lunch on us.”

“And above all, we must feel and act as if an endless continuation of our earthly life awaited us after death; and if it be that nothingness is the fate that awaits us we must not, in the words of Obermann, so act that it shall be a just fate.”

“I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.”