If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to break the sea frozen inside us.

I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.

What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm's time in the morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?

Our art is a way of being dazzled by truth: the light on the grotesquely grimacing retreating face is true, and nothing else.

I am more uncertain than I ever was; I feel only the power of life. And I am senselessly empty.

The thornbush is the old obstacle in the road. It must catch fire if you want to go further.

I can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though I feel that here in this world there’s no undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and I dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and I would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more.