All office workers are afraid of being late for work. — Stefan Zweig

Confidences are always risky: a secret entrusted to a stranger make him less of one. You've given away something of yourself, given him the advantage.

The vast power of money, mighty when you have it and even mightier when you don't, with its divine gift of freedom and the demonic fury it unleashes on those forced to do without it — they felt this as never before and were filled with bitter rage when, in the dark of the early morning, they saw the brightly lit windows and knew that those glowing gold curtains gave shelter and freedom to hundreds of thousands of people, men with women they desired, while they themselves were homeless, plodding blindly through the streets, through the rain; it was cruel as only the sea could be cruel — the sea in which a person can die of thirst.

In the end one needs forbearance to get by in this world.