We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds.

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.

The externals are simply so many props; everything we need is within us.

Despite everything, life is full of beauty and meaning.

I really see no other solution than to turn inwards and to root out all the rottenness there. I no longer believe that we can change anything in the world until we first change ourselves. And that seems to me the only lesson to be learned.

Life is good, after all...and that's what stays with me, even now, even when I'm about to be packed off to Poland.

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.