Slowly but surely I have been soaking Rilke up these last few months: the man, his work and his life. And that is probably the only right way with literature, with study, with people or with anything else: to let it all soak in, to let it all mature slowly inside you until it has become a part of yourself. That, too, is a growing process. Everything is a growing process. And in between, emotions and sensations that strike you like lightning. But still the most important thing is the organic process of growing.

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

There are moments when I feel like giving up or giving in, but I soon rally again and do my duty as I see it: to keep the spark of life inside me ablaze.

I know and share the many sorrows a human being can experience, but I do not cling to them; they pass through me, like life itself, as a broad eternal stream...and life continues.

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

And now that I don't want to own anything any more and am free, now I suddenly own everything, now my inner riches are immeasurable.

Here, beside this great black surface that is my desk, I feel as though I am on a desert island.