Happiness always has an object... Depends on external things. Joy... Has no object. It seizes you for no apparent reason, it's like the sun, its burning is fueled by its own heart.

Do you know what's one mistake we always make? Believing that life's immutable, that once you get on a particular track you have to follow it to the end of the line. But it appears that fate has more imagination than we do. Just when you think you're in a situation you can't escape from, when you've reached the lowest depths of total desperation, everything changes as fast as a gust of wind, everything's overturned; from one second to the next you find you're living a new life.

life is not a race, but a shot on target: what counts is not the saving of time, but the ability to find a centre

The only master that exists, the only one that's true and believable is your own conscience. To find it you have to stand in silence-alone and in silence-you have to stand on the naked earth, naked yourself and with nothing around you, as if you were already dead. You don't hear anything at first; the only thing you feel is terror, but then you begin to hear a voice, away in the background, far off; it's a calm voice, and maybe its banality gets on your nerves to begin with.

Happiness always has an object... Depends on external things. Joy... Has no object. It seizes you for no apparent reason, it's like the sun, its burning is fueled by its own heart.

In the course of that night I suddenly realized that there are many tiny windows between the body and the spirit. If they're open, emotions flow freely back and forth, but if they're partially closed, not much can filter through. Only love can fling them open all together, all at once, like a gust of wind.

Unshed tears leave a deposit on your heart. Eventually they form a crust around it and paralyze it, the way mineral deposits paralyze a washing machine.