There sat I, a faded being, under faded leaves.

Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause. Everything that is not literature bores me and I hate it. I lack all aptitude for family life except, at best, as an observer. I have no family feeling and visitors make me almost feel as though I were maliciously being attacked.

A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night.

Simply wait, be quiet, still The world will freely offer itself to you.

Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn't pull a corpse from its grave, I can't be dragged from my desk at night.

What am I doing here in this endless winter?

No matter how much you keep encouraging someone who is blindfolded to stare through the cloth, he still won’t see a thing.".