Book: Steppenwolf. Page 3

He is a genius of suffering, he developed a brilliant, unlimited, terrible capacity for suffering. The basis of his pessimism - not contempt for the world and contempt for myself, for, with all the devastating cruelty of his opinions about the institution or orders of the people, he never considered himself an exception, his arrows he sent first and foremost to himself, he hated and denied myself in the first place.

Never, it seemed to me, mere life had not caused such pain, as at this hour.

The morning was for him a bad time of the day, which he feared and which never brought him anything good. Never in his life had he been this morning really happy, never did in the forenoon watch good deeds, in the morning, he never came good thoughts, never brought it in the morning joy to ourselves and others.

But this does not mean that he was unhappy in some special (although he himself thought so, because everyone believes suffering that fell to his share as the greatest).

Because I'm the same as you. Because I'm as lonely as you and just as you, unable to love and accept seriously the life, people and myself.

I'm still forced to fall in love with me, but there's no hurry. While we are comrades, we are people who hope to become friends.

What a coward you are! Anyone who approaches the girl, runs the risk of being ridiculed, there's nothing you can do about it.

You're my opposite, you have everything I don't.

I was fascinated by this ability to switch suddenly from the deepest seriousness to the seriousness of the funniest, and Vice versa, and not changing at all and not grimacing, that she was like a gifted child.

She had to teach me how to live or teach to die, she had to touch his strong and beautiful hands of my cold, dead heart to either blossomed or disintegrated from the touch of life.

Oh, don't bother me! You're not crazy, sir, for me you're too nessassery! You, it seems to me like something in a silly way, very professorial.

Either you are hung, well, so hung up, so you have reasons, or move on and then you should care about life. Simple.

So I'll grab the razor and throw it again, until at last it was done.

Getting closer, the more distinctly I saw a Ghost now, which I was afraid of. It was the return home, to my room, it was a necessity to come to terms with despair!