Retiring and discovering that you no longer have enough energy to enjoy life and dying a few years out of sheer boredom.

We all, at some point, grow old and acquire other qualities, and these can always be turned to good advantage.

A best friend is someone with whom you can sit on the porch, without a word, and then walk away with the feeling that it was the best conversation that ever had in your life. I would like to see next to me was the man in whose presence my heart beat would be evenly and uniformly, the man next to whom I would be calm, because I was not afraid to be the next day to lose him. And the time would have flowed more slowly, and we could just keep quiet, knowing that to talk with us there is still a whole life. Only one thing makes a dream impossible - it is the fear of failure.

Writers are lampposts and critics are dogs. Ask lampposts what they think about dogs. Does the dog hurt the lamppost?

Love is only a small thing, enough for one person, and any suggestion that the heart might be larger than this is considered perverse.

Love appears and says: "You think you're heading towards a specific point, but the whole justification for the goal's existence lies in your love for it. Rest a little,but as soon as you can, get up and carry on. Because ever since your goal found out that you were traveling toward it, it has been running to meet you.

All my life, I thought of love as some kind of voluntary enslavement. Well, that's a lie: freedom only exists when love is present. The person who gives him or herself wholly, the person who feels freest, is the person who loves most wholeheartedly.