I am very present in my work and my work is somehow an expression of my soul, but at the same time I think that a writer cannot write out of nothing.

Perhaps love makes us grow old before our time and makes us young again when youth has passed.

God hides the fires of hell within paradise.

Ester asked why people are sad. "That’s simple," says the old man. "They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.

Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.

People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.

Mari remembered what she had read in the young girl's eyes the moment she had come into the refectory: fear. Fear. Veronika might feel insecurity, shyness, shame, constraint, but why fear? That was only justifiable when confronted by a real threat: ferocious animals, armed attackers, earthquakes, but not a group of people gathered together in a refectory. But human beings are like that,' she thought. 'We've replaced nearly all our emotions with fear.