“When I am dead, stop waiting and be free. Of me — put me deep inside you and then go out in the world and live. Love the world and yourself in it. Move though it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.”

“Love the world and yourself in it, move through it as though it offers no resistance, as though the world is your natural element.”

“But from the beginning, I knew that in a world where destiny was dead, I was destined, forever, to love him. Even though he didn't - though he couldn't - ever love me back.”

“My father reminds me that according to Midrash - the ever-evolving commentary upon the Hebrew scriptures - when you arrive in the world as a baby, your hands are clenched, as though to say, "Everything is mine. I will inherit it all." When you depart from the world, your hands are open, as though to say, "I have acquired nothing from the world.”

“I would like to have your sureness. I am waiting for love, the core of a woman's life."Don't wait for it," I said. "Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. And then love will come to you, then it comes to you. It was only when I wrote my first book that the world I wanted to live in opened to me.”

“Wild dreams torment me as I lie. And though a god lives in my heart, though all my power waken at his word, though he can move my every inmost part - yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. thus by existence tortured and oppressed I crave for death, I long for rest.”