“It takes courage to push yourself to places you have never been before... to test yout limits... to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to stay tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossum.”

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

“And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”

“In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again.”

“At sixteen, Sabina took moon baths—first of all, because everyone else took sun baths, and second, she admitted, because she had been told it was dangerous.”

“This great handsomeness I took into myself later when he desired me, but I took it as one breathes air, or swallows a snowflake, or yields to the sun.”

“I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.”