A Sad Affair Quotes

“Her mouth offered itself to me, and that item of consolation unhinged me! I have never kissed it, but in that hour of ostensibly my lowest humiliation, I could have become someone else, another man in pomp and glory! Yes, if I had lain down at her side then - I could have become a sailor or a revolutionary, a folk hero, a flag-bearer for definite, and the cynosure of all eyes, because, since I didn't become any of these things, I feet that if I had gone to her, I would have had to have become radiant for all eternity. I didn't, and I'm gray, an uninteresting traveler carrying a suitcase whose colorful labels are merely the evidence of meaningless journeys.”
― Wolfgang Koeppen, A Sad Affair