Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.

I love life - that’s my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life.

Whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency, and historical tasks is an actual or potential assassin.

There is not a single true work of art that has not in the end added to the inner freedom insight and life of each person who has known and loved it.

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

…. Query: How contrive not to waste one's time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting-room; by remaining on one's balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language on doesn't know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth.

Every authentic work of art is a gift offered to the future.