We need the books that affect us like a disaster

All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

My doubts stand in a circle around every word, I see them before I see the word, but what then! I do not see the word at all, I invent it.

Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more.

Only the moment counts. It determines life.

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?