I love tunnels. They 're the symbol of hope: sometime it will be bright again. If by chance it is not night.

I am still there, at that distant place in time, I never left it, but live expanded in the past, or out of it.

What is it that we call loneliness. It can’t simply be the absence of others, you can be alone and not lonely, and you can be among people and yet be lonely. So what is it?

That words could cause something in the world, make someone move or stop, laugh or cry: even as a child he had found it extraordinary and it never stopped impressing him. How did words do that? Wasn't it like magic?

'De nada,' replied Gregorius. The Portuguese couple sat down, the train went on. Gregorius was never to forget this scene. They were his first Portuguese words in the real world and they worked. That words could cause something in the world, make someone move or stop, laugh or cry: even as a child he had found it extraordinary and it had never stopped impressing him.

I would not like to live in a world without cathedrals. I need their beauty and grandeur. I need their imperious silence. I need it against the witless bellowing of the barracks yard and the witty chatter of the yes-men. I want to hear the rustling of the organ, this deluge of ethereal notes. I need it against the shrill farce of marches.

Our lives are rivers, gliding free to that unfathomed, boundless sea, the silent grave!