Thus, in a middle course between these heights and depths, they drifted through life rather than lived, the prey of aimless days and sterile memories, like wandering shadows that could have acquired substance only by consenting to root themselves in the solid earth of their distress.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

I don't want to be a genius-I have enough problems just trying to be a man.

If one could only say just once: 'this is clear', all would be saved

The more I produce, the less I am certain. On the road along which the artist walks, night falls ever more densely. Finally, he dies blind.

And indeed it could be said that once the faintest stirring of hope became possible, the dominion of plague was ended.

There is nothing abstract about pain. It is specific, it is real, and, when it is intense, it is world destroying.