World's Pet Freak

i cannot believe that a kindly word, a quiet taking by the hand, a friendly look, could not have got me to do anything that was wanted of me.

not every child has the endurance and fearlessness to go on searching until it comes to the kindliness that lies beneath the surface

i felt a miserable specimen, and what’s more, not only in your eyes but in the eyes of the whole world, for you were for me the measure of all things.

i could enjoy what you gave, but only in humiliation, weariness, weakness, and with a sense of guilt. that was why i could be grateful to you for everything only as a beggar is, and could never show it by doing the right things.

i repeat for the tenth time: even in other circumstances i should probably have become a shy and nervous person, but it is a long dark road from there to where i have really come.

in keeping with my sluggishness and pedantry countless worries are involved in all this, but they are not decisive; they do, like worms, complete the work on the corpse

it is as if a person were a prisoner, and he had not only the intention to escape, which would perhaps be attainable, but also, and indeed simultaneously, the intention to rebuild the prison as a pleasure dome for himself.