It now seemed to me that all my other guesses had been only self-pleasing dreams spun out of my wishes, but now I was awake.

The prayer preceding all prayers is 'May it be the real I who speaks. May it be the real Thou that I speak to.'

Even I never dreamed of Magic like this!

When we force a boy to be a mediocrity in a dozen subjects we destroy his standards, perhaps for life.

Though we cannot experience our life as an endless present, we are eternal in God's eyes; that is, in our deepest reality.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.

Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it.