The true word leads; the untrue misleads.

Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.

The old incapacity. Interrupted my writing for barely ten days and already cast out. Once again prodigious efforts stand before me. You have to dive down, as it were, and sink more rapidly than that which sinks in advance of you.

The Expulsion from Paradise is eternal in its principal aspect: this makes it irrevocable, and our living in this world inevitable, but the eternal nature of the process has the effect that not only could we remain forever in Paradise, but that we are currently there, whether we know it or not.