The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.

I smile, now, thinking: we all like to think we are important enough to need psychiatrists

As from a star I saw, coldly and soberly, the separateness of everything. I felt the wall of my skin; I am I. That stone is a stone. My beautiful fusion with the things of this world was over.

We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine.

I have to live my life, and it is the only one I’ll ever have.

The man creates a pseudonym and hides behind it like a worm

... you looked around and saw everybody either married or busy and happy and thinking and being creative, and you felt scared, sick, lethargic, worst of all, not wanting to cope. You saw visions of yourself in a straightjacket, and a drain on the family, murdering your mother in actuality, killing the edifice of love and respect built up over the years in the hearts of other people.