My life was sweeter than other people's and my death will be more terrible by the same degree.

Isolation is a way to know ourselves.

For we are like tree trunks in the snow. In appearance they lie smoothly and a little push should be enough to set them rolling. No, it can't be done, for they are firmly wedded to the ground. But see, even that is only appearance.

We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

We were expelled from Paradise, but it was not destroyed. The expulsion from Paradise was in one sense a piece of good fortune, for if we had not been expelled, Paradise would have had to be destroyed.

The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.

Utterance does not in principle mean a weakening of conviction--that would not be anything to be deplored--but a weakness of conviction.