Sex is difficult, yes. But they are difficult things with which we have been charged...If you only recognize this and manage out of yourself, out of your own nature and ways, out of your own experience and childhood and strength to achieve a relation to sex wholly your own (not influenced by convention and custom) then you need no longer be afraid of losing yourself and becoming unworthy of your best possession.

And you should not let yourself be confused in your solitude by the fact that there is something in you that wants to move out of it.

We are not permitted to linger, even with what is most intimate.

Perhaps the great renewal of the world will consist of this, that man and woman, freed of all confused feelings and desires, shall no longer seek each other as opposites, but simply as members of a family and neighbors, and will unite as human beings, in order to simply, earnestly, patiently, and jointly bear the heavy responsibility of sexuality that has been entrusted to them.

This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us.

It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.

But your solitude will be a support and a home for you, even in the midst of very unfamiliar circumstances, and from it you will find all your paths.