Our being is continually undergoing and entering upon changes. ... We must, strictly speaking, at every moment give each other up and let each other go and not hold each other back.

Understand, I'll slip quietly away from the noisy crowd when I see the pale stars rising, blooming, over the oaks. I'll pursue solitary pathways through the pale twilit meadows with only this one dream: You come too.

Wanting to change, to improve, a person's situation means offering him, for difficulties in which he is practiced and experienced, other difficulties that will find him perhaps even more bewildered.

So you mustn't be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen; if an anxiety - like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and everything you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in the palm of its hand and will not let you fall.

To have a childhood means to live a thousand lives before the one.

If my devils are to leave me, I'm afraid my angels will take flight as well.

The deep parts of my life pour onward, as if the river shores were opening out. I feel closer to what language can't reach. With my senses, as with birds, I climb into the windy heaven... in the ponds broken off from the sky. . .