Dawn's faint breath breathes with your mouth at the ends of empty streets. Gray light your eyes, sweet drops of dawn on dark hills. Your steps and breath like the wind of dawn smother houses. The city shudders, Stones exhale— you are life, an awakening. Star lost in the light of dawn, trill of the breeze, warmth, breath— the night is done. You are light and morning.

At great periods you have always felt, deep within you, the temptation to commit suicide. You gave yourself to it, breached your own defenses. You were a child. The idea of suicide was a protest against life; by dying, you would escape this longing for death.

Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.

The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.

Will power is only the tensile strength of one's own disposition. One cannot increase it by a single ounce.

Remember, writing poetry is like making love: one will never know whether one's own pleasure is shared.

There is mercy for everyone, except those who are bored with life.