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“The gas lamps in the street went out. Shadows crept along the walls. So there were ghosts. During the night they came flying here and crouched over the books. Then they read. They needed no light, they had such big eyes. Now he would not touch a single book on the upper shelves, nor on the lower ones either. He crept under the counter and his teeth chattered. Ten thousand books and a ghost crouching over each one. That was why it was so quiet. Sometimes he heard them turn over a page. They read as fast as he did himself. He might have grown used to them, but there were ten thousand of them and perhaps one of them would bite.”
― Elias Canetti, Auto-da-Fé

“Woe to those who shall come after us! They are lost, they will inherit from us a million martyrs and the instruments of torture with which they must destroy a second million.”
― Elias Canetti, Auto-da-Fé

“When the concept of a dispossessed proletariat was first advanced and began to take effect, it retained the full optimism of increase. No one supposed for a moment that, because their lives were miserable, there ought perhaps to be fewer of them.”
― Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power

“I hated childhood
I hate adulthood
And I love being alive”
― Mary Ruefle, Trances of the Blast