How pathetically scanty my self-knowledge is compared with, say, my knowledge of my room. There is no such thing as observation of the inner world, as there is of the outer world.

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.

And I leave my post of observation and find I have had enough of this outside life; I feel that there is nothing more that I can learn here, either now or at any time. And I long to say a last goodbye to everything up here, to go down into my burrow never to return again, let things take their course, and not try to retard them with my profitless vigils.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

Nothing, you know, gives the body greater satisfaction than ordering people about, or at least believing in one's ability to do so.

Some deny the existence of misery by pointing to the sun; he denies the existence of the sun by pointing to misery.