Abel

“The freedom to fail is preserved, as a sort of supreme law, which guarantees escape at every fresh juncture. One is inclined to call this the freedom of the weak person who seeks salvation in defeat. His true uniqueness, his special relation to power, is expressed in the prohibition of victory. All calculations originate and end in impotence.”
― Elias Canetti, Kafka's Other Trial: The Letters to Felice

“I had been grateful for her willingness to keep in touch. If I was not there to see my children each night when they came home from school, to have dinners with them and do homework and take them shopping and work on school assignments, I could at least get regular updates from her. How would I be a parent to them now?”
― Shulem Deen, All Who Go Do Not Return

“Hanna had Communist leanings, which I couldn’t bear, and on the other a tendency to mysticism, or to put it less kindly, hysteria”
― Max Frisch, Homo Faber

“She thought it stupid of a woman to want to be understood by a man; the man (said Hanna) wants the woman to be a mystery, so that he can be inspired and excited by his own incomprehension.”
― Max Frisch, Homo Faber