Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.

I never imagined that so many days would ultimately make such a small life.

Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.

Man cannot live without a continuous confidence in something indestructible within himself.

A picture of my existence... would show a useless wooden stake covered in snow... stuck loosely at a slant in the ground in a ploughed field on the edge of a vast open plain on a dark winter night.

Like tired dogs they stand there, because they use up all their strength in remaining upright in one's memory.

. . . 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.