I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.

Marrying, founding a family, accepting all the children that come, supporting them in this insecure world, and perhaps even guiding them a little, is, I am convinced, the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all.

I made the remark that I don't avoid people in order to live quietly, but rather in order to be able to die quietly.

Isolation is a way to know ourselves.

I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.

A lawyer is a person who writes a 10,000-word document and calls it a "brief."

Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.