I would be so exhausted by my determination that I had no strength left to do the actual work.

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.

I feel like a small battlefield in which the problems, or some of the problems, of our time are being fought out. All one can hope to do is keep oneself humbly available, to allow oneself to be a battlefield. After all, the problems must be accommodated, have somewhere to struggle and come to rest and we, poor little humans, must put our inner space at their service and not run away.

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

How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses.

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world.

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.