Pär Lagerkvist

Bitter, too, to be forced to acknowledge in one's heart how little love has to do with kindness.

Nothing is more foreign than the world of one's childhood when one has truly left it.

No, the man said, looking past him with his empty gaze, the realm of the dead isn't anything. But to those who have been there, nothing else is anything either.

Nothing is so sure as the final oblivion.

Eternity… It has nothing to do with life, I thought; it is the contrary to all life. It is something limitless, endless, a realm of death which the living must look into with horror. Was it here that I was to dwell?

Malevolence, like love, needs few words.

Only the gods have many destinies and need never die. They are filled with everything and experience everything. Everything - except human happiness. That they can never know and therefore they grudge it to men. Nothing makes them so evil and cruel as that men should presume to be happy and forget them for the sake of their earthly happiness.