The ordinary object of human endeavor—property, outward success, luxury—have always seemed to me contemptible.

I have now been promoted to an “evil monster” in Germany, and all my money has been taken away from me. But I console myself with the thought that the latter would soon be gone, anyway.

I’m doing just fine, considering that I have triumphantly survived Nazism and two wives.

Funny people, these Germans. To them I am a stinking flower, yet they make me into a boutonniere time and time again.

Like the man in the fairytale who turned everything he touched into gold, so with me everything is turned into newspaper clamor.

I’ve been so preoccupied with what would happen in the event of my death that I’m surprised to find myself still alive.

She knows her way around the family of radioactive substances better than I know the way around my own family.

In the past it never occurred to me that every casual remark of mine would be snatched up and recorded. Otherwise I would have crept further into my shell.

I lived in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in maturity.

I have never lost an obstinate sense of detachment, of the need for solitude—a feeling which increases over the years.