“What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness, and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful?”
“There is hardly any contact more depressing to a young ardent creature than that of a mind in which years full of knowledge seem to have issued a blank absence of interest or sympathy.”
″‘I wish from the bottom of my heart that you will land soon, Little Man,’ Officer Padron said again. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just doing my job.’
Josef looked deep into Officer Padron’s eyes, searching for some sign of help, some hint of sympathy. Officer Padron just looked away.”
“Retreating from his unsympathetic family, he first builds a hideout under the kitchen sink, befriending the broken-down alarm clock he finds there, and then he runs away altogether.”