“As phantoms frighten beasts when shadows fall.”

“To love those who despise us, and to give one's hand to the phantom who tries to frighten us?”

“Foolish man. You cannot turn me into a phantom because you are frightened. You do not dismiss a muse at whim. - Sabine Strohem”

“We are but phantoms, and the phantoms of phantoms, desires like cloud-shadows and wills of straw that eddy in the wind; the days pass, use and wont carry us through as a train carries the shadow of its lights - so be it! But one thing is real and certain, one thing is no dream-stuff, but eternal and enduring. It is the centre of my life, and all other things about it are subordinate or altogether vain. I loved her, that woman of a dream. And she and I are dead together!”

“We are all ghosts of yesterday, and the phantom of tomorrow awaits us alike in sunshine or in shadow, dimly perceived at times, never entirely lost.”

“It is as though she was a phantom watching from the shadows. This at least is how she 'writes' herself: as an absence on which others projected their desires and anxieties.”