the knowledge of impermanence that haunts our days is their very fragrance.

Someday you will name me, then gently place those burning holy roses in my hair.

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

Fame is finally only the sum total of all the misunderstanding that can gather around a new name.

And we, spectators always, everywhere, looking at, never out of, everything! It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses. We re-arrange it, and collapse ourselves. Who's turned us round like this, so that we always, do what we may, retain the attitude of someone who's departing? Just as he, on the last hill, that shows him all his valley for the last time, will turn and stop and linger, we live our lives, for ever taking leave.

It is good to say it aloud: 'Nothing has happened.' Once again: 'Nothing has happened.' Does that help?"

There exists a creature which is perfectly harmless; when it passes before your eyes you scarcely notice it and forget it again immediately. But as soon as it invisibly gets somehow into your ears, it develops there, it hatches, as it were, and cases have been known where it was penetrated even into the brain and has thriven devastatingly in that organ, like those pneumococci in dogs that gain entrance through the nose.This creature is one's neighbor.