. . . The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation-a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.

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.

I do not see the world at all; I invent it.

Just because your doctor has a name for your condition, doesn't mean he knows what it is.

It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.

I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.

I am away from home and must always write home, even if any home of mine has long since floated away into eternity.