"Perhaps I'll stay here with you ..." I said, appalled by Zorba's desperate affection for me. "Perhaps I shall come away with you. I'm free."Zorba shook his head."No, you're not free," he said. "The string you're tied to is perhaps no longer than other people's. That's all. You're on a long piece of string, boss; you come and go, and think you're free, but you never cut the string in two. And when people don't cut that string ..."I'll cut it some day!" I said defiantly, because Zorba's words had touched an open wound in me and hurt."It's difficult, boss, very difficult. You need a touch of folly to do that; folly, d'you see? You have to risk everything! But you've got such a strong head, it'll always get the better of you. A man's head is like a grocer; it keeps accounts: I've paid so much and earned so much and that means a profit of this much or a loss of that much! The head's a careful little shopkeeper; it never risks all it has, always keeps something in reserve. It never breaks the. string. Ah no! It hangs on tight to it, the bastard! If the string slips out of its grasp, the head, poor devil, is lost, finished! But if a man doesn't break the string, tell me, what flavor is left in life? The flavor of camomile, weak camomile tea! Nothing like rum—that makes you see life inside out!"

"“What’s your favorite dish, granddad?”"

"What d'you lack? You're young, you have money, health, you're a good fellow, you lack nothing. Nothing, by thunder! Except just one thing — folly! And when that's missing, boss, well ..."

""Alexis," he said, "I'm going to tell you a secret. You're too small to understand now, but you'll understand when you are bigger. Listen, little one: neither the seven stories of heaven nor the seven stories of the earth are enough to contain God; but a man's heart can contain him. So be very careful, Alexis — and may my blessing go with you — never to wound a man's heart!"

"It's all because of doing things by halves, saying things by halves, that the world is in the mess is in today. Do things properly by God! One good knock for each nail and you'll win through! God hates a halfdevil ten times more than an archdevil!"

"You want to build a monastery. That's it! Instead of monks you'd stick a few quill drivers like your honored self inside and they'd pass the time scribbling day and night. [...] Well, I'm going to ask you a favor, holy abbot: I want you to appoint me doorkeeper to your monastery so that I can do some smuggling and, now and then, let some very strange things through into the holy precincts: women, mandolins, demijohns of raki, roast sucking pigs ... All so that you don't fritter away your life with a lot of nonsense!"

"I'm sorting out my own brand of folly here in Candia."

"Boss, everything's simple in the world. How many times must I tell you? So don't go and complicate things!"

"Live life and enjoy it!"

"Wife; children; house; everything. The full catastrophe."

"Happiness is doing your duty, and the harder the duty is the greater the happiness."

"Sometimes the earth becomes transparent and we see our ultimate ruler, the grub, working night and day in his underground workshops. But we quickly turn our eyes away, because men can endure everything except the sight of that small white maggot."

"The highest point a man can obtain is not Knowledge, or Virtue, or Goodness, or Victory, but something even greater, more heroic and more despairing: Sacred Awe!"

"Well all those damned books you read — what good are they? Why do you read them? If they don't tell you [why we die], what do they tell you?"

"What's strange in that, you idiot? The truth is that man is full of worms from the day he's born, but you can't see them."

"What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, radishes, and out of him come sighs, laughter and dreams. Like a factory. I'm sure there's a sort of talking-film cinema in our heads."

"As I watched the seagulls, I thought: "That's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust.""