If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read? So that it shall make us happy? Good God, we should also be happy if we had no books, and such books as make us happy we could, if need be, write ourselves. But what we must have are those books which come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us deeply, like the death of one we love better than ourselves; like suicide. A book must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

You are at once both the quiet and the confusion of my heart.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

My peers, lately, have found companionship through means of intoxication - it makes them sociable. I, however, cannot force myself to use drugs to cheat on my loneliness - it is all that I have - and when the drugs and alcohol dissipate, will be all that my peers have as well.