What I fear is not being forgotten after my death, but, rather, not being enough forgotten. As we were saying, it is not our books that survive, but our poor lives that linger in the histories.

The Eucharist engages us unreservedly; it is a pact of love, an alliance signed in the deeper recesses of our being. All our potentialities are called upon to warrant the protection and fulfillment of this pact.

Doubt is nothing but a trivial agitation on the surface of the soul, while deep down there is a calm certainty.

Men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed-off wings where he never ventures.

I love Germany so much I'm glad there are two of them.

A writer is essentially a man who does not resign himself to loneliness.

We are, all of us, molded and remolded by those who have loved us, and though that love may pass, we remain none the less their work--a work that very likely they do not recognize, and which is never exactly what they intended.