Joseph Roth: The Radetzky March

That was how things were back then. Anything that grew took its time growing, and anything that perished took a long time to be forgotten. But everything that had once existed left its traces, and people lived on memories just as they now live on the ability to forget quickly and emphatically.

"Anyway, I am unfitted to hold down a job anywhere unless they were to pay me for getting angry at the world."

A lot of truths about the living world are recorded in bad books; they are just badly written about.