“I placidly wait for what I don't know- My future and the future of everything.In the end there will only be silence except Where the waves of the sea bathe nothing.”

“I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or what I am.”

“I read and am liberated. I acquire objectivity. I cease being myself and so scattered. And what I read, instead of being like a nearly invisible suit that sometimes oppresses me, is the external world’s tremendous and remarkable clarity, the sun that sees everyone, the moon that splotches the still earth with shadows, the wide expanses that end in the sea, the blackly solid trees whose tops greenly wave, the steady peace of ponds on farms, the terraced slopes with their paths overgrown by grape-vines.”

“Silence emerges from the sound of rain and spreads in a crescendo of gray monotony over the narrow street I contemplate. I’m sleeping while awake, standing by the window, leaning against it as against everything. I search in myself for the sensations I feel before these falling threads of darkly luminous water that stand out from the grimy building facades and especially from the open windows. And I don’t know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don’t know what to think or where I am.”

“If, on thinking this, I look up to see if reality can quench my thirst, I see inexpressive facades, inexpressive faces, inexpressive gestures. Stones, bodies, ideas - all dead. All movements are one great standstill. Nothing means anything to me, not because it's unfamiliar but because I don't know what it is. The world has slipped away. And in the bottom of my soul - as the only reality of this moment - there's an intense and invisible grief, a sadness like the sound of someone crying in a dark room.”

“I Know, I AloneI know, I aloneHow much it hurts, this heartWith no faith nor lawNor melody nor thought.Only I, only IAnd none of this can I sayBecause feeling is like the sky -Seen, nothing in it to see.”

“That’s why I read, as a stranger,My being as if it were pages.Not knowing what will comeAnd forgetting what has passed,I note in the margin of my reading What I thought I felt. Rereading, I wonder: “Was that me?”God knows, because he wrote it.”