“...as I was sifting through a heap of old and new "identity cards," I noticed that something was missing: my identity.”

“But it's fair to say that the war's [WWI] dialectic forced those who were more or less alive to go to their death, and gave those who were more or less dead the right to live. And if the war managed only to separate the living from the dead, then the new regime, arriving in its wake, would sooner or later pit them against each other as enemies.”

“In short, you had that particular ability which I never had: the ability to be alive.”

“Hiding my half existence behind the opaque walls of my skull, concealing it like a shameful disease, I did not consider the simple fact that the same thing could be occurring under other skullcaps, in other locked rooms.”

“...as I was sifting through a heap of old and new "identity cards," I noticed that something was missing: my identity.”