I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.

Who can really distinguish between the sea and what's reflected in it? Or tell the difference between the falling rain and loneliness?

I wasn't in love with her. And she didn't love me. For me the question of love was irrelevant. What I sought was the sense of being tossed about by some raging, savage force, in the midst of which lay something absolutely crucial. I had no idea what that was. But I wanted to thrust my hand right inside her body and touch it, whatever it was.

So what’s wrong if there happens to be one guy in the world who enjoys trying to understand you?

Ordinary imperfect people, always choose similarly imperfect people as friends.

"They tell us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, but I don't believe that." he said. Then, a moment later, he added: "Oh, the fear is there, all right. It comes to us in many different forms, at different times, and overwhelms us. But the most frightening thing we can do at such times is to turn our backs on it, to close our eyes. For then we take the most precious thing inside us and surrender it to something else. In my case, that something was the wave."

I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string.