The Man Without Qualities Quotes

“For the inhabitant of a country has at least nine characters: a professional, a national, a civic, a class, a geographic, a sexual, a conscious, an unconscious, and possibly even a private character to boot. He unites them in himself, but they dissolve him, so that he is really nothing more than a small basin hollowed out by these many streamlets that trickle into it and drain out of it again, to join other such rills in filling some other basin. Which is why every inhabitant of the earth also has a tenth character that is nothing else than the passive fantasy of spaces yet unfilled [....] prevent[ing] precisely what should be his true fulfillment.”
― Robert Musil

“Anyone who's read all of Proust plus The Man withour Qualities is bound t be missing out on a few other titles.”
― Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs

“A man today who still aspires to integrity deserves a lot of credit.”
― Robert Musil