“If people can just love each other a little bit, they can be so happy.”

“If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.”

“But this is what ... people are so often and disastrously wrong in doing: they (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment ...And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of half broken things that they would like to call their happiness, and their futures?And so each of them loses himself to the other for the sake of the other person, and loses the other. And loses the vast possibilities ... in exchange for an unfruitful confusion, out of which nothing more can come, nothing but a bit of disgust, disappointment and poverty.”

“If you can learn to love yourself and all the flaws, you can love other people so much better. And that makes you so happy.”

“There is no word for our kind of friendship. Two people who don'tsee each other a lot, but can make each other effortlessly happy”

“Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other, but it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.”