We human beings cause monstrous conditions, but precisely because we cause them we soon learn to adapt ourselves to them. Only if we become such that we can no longer adapt ourselves, only if, deep inside, we rebel against every kind of evil, will we be able to put a stop to it. ... while everything within us does not yet scream out in protest, so long will we find ways of adapting ourselves, and the horrors will continue.

I think what weakens people most is fear of wasting their strength.

I don’t want to be anything special. I only want to try to be true to that in me which seeks to fulfill its promise.

That I should die next week, I would still be able to sit at my desk all week and study with perfect equanimity, for I know now that life and death make a meaningful whole.

Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else.

Every day I shall put my papers in order and every day I shall say farewell. And the real farewell, when it comes, will only be a small outward confirmation of what has been accomplished within me from day to day.

After each creative act one has to be sustained by one's strength of character, by a moral sense, by I don't know what, lest one tumble.