A miracle that he was even speaking, and then to say what he had said. Usually you hear only about the things… — Anna Seghers

One morning in September 1940, when the largest swastika flag in all of the countries occupied by Germany was flying over the Place de la Concorde in Paris, and the lines outside the shops were as long as the streets themselves, a certain Luise Meunier, the wife of a lathe operator and mother of three children, heard that one could buy eggs at a shop in the 14th arrondissement. (beginning of "Shelter")

He stopped before a shopwindow, and we recognized his face. On the left side of his forehead, just below the hairline, he had an incredible scar. He stood there, with this hole in his temple, in the middle of the colorful Parisian winter-evening throngs, like one risen from the dead, like the captain of a ship of the dead. Such people wear their own legend like a heraldic crest wherever they go. And whenever we see such people, their external appearance reminds us of this legend. (from "Meeting Again")

It had all been in vain. The prayers in churches and in mosques-all in vain. The invocations, the appeals to long-forgotten, long-ignored gods-in vain. And their final resistance with knives and teeth-in vain. Cowardice had also been in vain. Hiding, waiting-everything in vain. In vain, too, the promises, the hopes, the unexpected generosity of strangers. Whether their fathers had started plowing only yesterday or their forefathers two thousand years ago-it was all in vain. Men who looked death in the eye as they did life, coldly without blinking, and wore lions' claws made of iron on their belts, their courage was in vain; and in vain did the lion keep his vigil before the palace in the capital city. The conquerors rode astride his back and tore at his mane, yelling and hooting. Everything that had existed before had become incomprehensible. The totality of life and living, because it was suddenly all in vain. The simple yesterday and the day before yesterday that were clear to everyone, and the two thousand years that some men could look back on, the incredible, hazy yet real life, one's own existence from time immemorial-the one as much in vain as the other. If there is not going to be any future, then the past will all have been in vain. (beginning of "The Guide")