Max von Sydow

Andreas Winkelman: I'm dead. No, that's too melodramatic. I'm not dead. But I live without self-respect. I know it sounds silly and pretentious. Most people live without self-esteem. Humiliated at heart, stifled, and spat upon. They're alive and that's all they know. They know of no alternative. Even if they did, they would never reach out for it. Can one be sick with humiliation? Is this a disease we have to live with? We talk so much about freedom. Isn't freedom a poison for the humiliated? Or is it merely a drug the humiliated use in order to endure? I can't live like this. I've given up. I can't stand it anymore. The days drag by. I'm choked by the food I swallow, the shit I get rid of, the words I say. The daylight screams at me every morning to get up. Sleep is only dreams that chase me. The darkness rustles with ghosts and memories. Has is ever occurred to you that the worse off people are, the less they complain? Finally, they're silent even if they're living creatures with nerves, eyes, and hands. Vast armies of victims and hangmen. The sun rises and falls, heavily. The cold approaches. The darkness. The heat. The smell. They're all silent. We can never leave. It's too late. Everything's too late.

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Töre: You see it, God. You see it. The innocent child's death, and my revenge. You allowed it. I don't understand You. I don't understand You. Yet, I still ask your forgiveness. I know no other way to live. I promise You, God... here on the dead body of my only child, I promise you that, to cleanse my sins, here I shall build a church. On this spot. Of mortar and stone... and with these, my hands.

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Antonius Block: Is it so terribly inconceivable to comprehend God with one's senses? Why does he hide in a cloud of half-promises and unseen miracles? How can we believe in the faithful when we lack faith? What will happen to us who want to believe, but can not? What about those who neither want to nor can believe? Why can't I kill God in me? Why does He live on in me in a humiliating way - despite my wanting to evict Him from my heart? Why is He, despite all, a mocking reality I can't be rid of?

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