The leaves are falling, falling as if from far up,as if orchards were dying high in space.Each leaf falls as if it were motioning "no."And tonight the heavy earth is fallingaway from all other stars in the loneliness.We're all falling. This hand here is falling.And look at the other one. It's in them all.And yet there is Someone, whose handsinfinitely calm, holding up all this falling.

Where something becomes extremely difficult and unbearable, there we also stand always already quite near its transformation.

Love the questions themselves...Live the questions now and have confidence that someday far into the future, [I will live my] way into the answer.

But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is-solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves.

I never read anything concerning my work. I feel that criticism is a letter to the public which the author, since it is not directed to him, does not have to open and read.

There are moments in which a rose is more important than a piece of bread

All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.