"That's right," said the thin, grey man, "the Führer gets to have the ideals, and we get to carry the can."
A thin, gray man is trying to pass through the crowd on the street, because the Führer is about the make an appearance. The man is only concerned about getting to his job on time, though. One of SA men tells him that he should be grateful for the Führer's ideals and this is what the man answers. He is immediately taken away by the SA men. It shows a complete and utter silencing and submission of regular people who aren't blind to what's happening, but who end up like the thin, gray man if they dare to speak.
"The purest of lyric poets needs to yearn for perfection. Once you've got perfection, poetry stops. Once criticism's no longer possible, you have to keep quiet."
Heine is a critical voice in the novel, correlating with the author. The perfection he talks about is a twisted idea of perfection forced upon people by dictatorship, with hatred and fear. Criticism is not any longer possible because there is nothing to criticize, but because criticism is completely forbidden.
"These days, it means quite a lot if a desperate man, ready for anything, refrains from killing someone else."
Sanna's brother, Algin, completely lost his freedom of writing under Nazi rule, just like all the other artists lost their freedom. The only way to survive is to write about the greatness of Hitler and Nazism. Unable to sell himself like that, he's come to a point where life doesn't have much value to him. It truly shows the tense and desperate atmosphere and crumbling of society where people are pushed to the edge having lost all hope.
