“Strangely the tumescence began to subside, the flesh at his neck to pale. Any sovereign or broken yo-yo must feel after a short time lying inert, rolling, falling: suddenly to have its hands it cannot escape. Hands it doesn’t want to escape. Know that the simple clockwork of itself has no more need for symptoms of inutility, lonesomeness, directionlessness, because now it has a path marked out for it over which it has no control. That’s what the feeling would be, if there were such things as animate yo-yos.”

“If you want a thing--truly want it, want it so badly that you need it as you need air to breathe, then unless you die, you will have it. Why not? It has you. There is no escape. What a cruel and terrible thing escape would be if escape were possible”

“He cannot stop imagining his bloody hands or himself lying mortally at the bottom of that bathtub, which, for now, serves as his refuge, as his escape from the World, from that which is outside, but which, Any day now, I could decide to go in.”

“All of this happened while I was walking around starving in Christiania – that strange city no one escapes from until it has left its mark on him.”

“Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate — he has little success in this — but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different (and more) things than do the others; after all, dead as he is in his own lifetime, he is the real survivor. This assumes that he does not need both hands, or more hands than he has, in his struggle against despair.”

“They say that [martial law] would have cost my country less than the bloody anarchy which is there now. I can only reply that it is easy to play the prophet a posteriori and that a sovereign may not save his throne by shedding his compatriots' blood. A dictator can, because he acts, because he acts in the name of an ideology which he believes must triumph whatever the price. But a sovereign is not a dictator. There is an alliance between him and his people which he cannot break. A dictator has nothing to hand over. Power lies in him, and in him alone. A sovereign receives a crown and it is his duty to pass it on.”

“Contrary to what phenomenology—which is always phenomenology of perception—has tried to make us believe, contrary to what our desire cannot fail to be tempted into believing, the thing itself always escapes.”

“But has man's political skill marched hand-in-hand with his technical and scientific skill? Man can chain lightning to his command-can be control the society in which be lives? The answer is No! The political skill of man has been far outstripped by technical skill, and what lie has made he cannot be sure of controlling.”

“Escape, God how we all need escape from this tiny here. The need for it has motivated just about everything man has ever done in any direction other than that of the satisfaction of his physical appetites; it has led him along weird and wonderful pathways; it has led him into art and religion, ascetism and astrology, dancing and drinking, poetry and insanity. All of these have been escapes because he has known only recently the true direction of escape—outward, into infinity and eternity, away from this little flat if rounded surface we’re born on and die on. This mote in the solar system, this atom in the galaxy.”

“Who's dat knockin' at de do',
Who's dat callin' here ter-day?
What yo' want to see me fo'?
Tell me what yo' got to say.
What yo' name an' what yo' mean,
Standin' out there in de gloam?
Trouble, waitin' to come in?
No sir, no sir, I ain't home!”