I read and am liberated. I acquire objectivity. I cease being myself and so scattered. And what I read, instead of being like a nearly invisible suit that sometimes oppresses me, is the external world’s tremendous and remarkable clarity, the sun that sees everyone, the moon that splotches the still earth with shadows, the wide expanses that end in the sea, the blackly solid trees whose tops greenly wave, the steady peace of ponds on farms, the terraced slopes with their paths overgrown by grape-vines.

I bear the wounds of all the battles I avoided.

Whenever someone tells me he dreamed, I wonder if he realizes that he has never done anything but dream.

When one of my Japanese teacups is broken, I imagine that the real cause was not the careless hand of a maid but the anxieties of the figures inhabiting the curves of that porcelain. Their grim decision to commit suicide doesn't shock me: they used the maid as one of us might use a gun.

I realize that I was all error and deviation, that I never lived, that I existed only in so far as I filled time with consciousness and thought.

The human soul is an abyss

Between me and life is a faint glass. No matter how sharply I see and understand life, I cannot touch it.