Mother Night

Everybody else, no matter what side he was on, no matter what he did, is sure a good man could not have acted in any other way.

“Most things in this world don’t work—” he said, “but aspirin do.”

To say that he was a playwright is to offer an even harsher warning to the reader, for no one is a better liar than a man who has warped lives and passions onto something as grotesquely artificial as a stage.

And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It’s good for you.

“They took all the light bulbs,” she said in German.
“What?” I said.
“The people who broke into your apartment—they took all the light bulbs from the stairway,” she said.
“Um,” I said.
“In Germany, too,” she said.
“Pardon me?” I said.
“That was one of the things—when the S.S. or the Gestapo came and took somebody away—” she said.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Other people would come into the building, wanting to do something patriotic,” she said. “And that was one of the things they always did. Somebody always took the light bulbs.” She shook her head. “Such a strange thing for somebody always to do.”

There is nothing left of him but curiosity and a pair of eyes.

“I admire form,” I said. “I admire things with a beginning, a middle, an end—and, whenever possible, a moral, too.”

“You don’t write any more?” she said.
“There hasn’t been anything I’ve wanted to say,” I said.
“After all you’ve seen, all you’ve been through, darling?” she said.
“It’s all I’ve seen, all I’ve been through,” I said, “that makes it damn nearly impossible for me to say anything. I’ve lost the knack of making sense. I speak gibberish to the civilized world, and it replies in kind.”

I didn’t get the job, and I didn’t want it, either. I applied, I think, simply to demonstrate to myself that there really was such a person as me.

I am an old fool who borrowed the dreams of a young fool.