“He who imagines he can do without the world deceives himself much; but he who fancies the world cannot do without him is still more mistaken.”

“arouse in the other person an eager want. He who can do this has the whole world with him. He who cannot walks a lonely way.”

“He put his arms about himself as if he were cold. "I do not know who to be without him.”

“If a man couldn't escape what he came from, we would most of us still be peasants in Old World hovels. But, if, having escaped or not, he wants in some way to know himself, define himself, and tries to do it without taking into account the thing he came from, he is writing without any ink in his pen. The provincial who cultivates only his roots is in peril, potato-like, of becoming more root than plant. The man who cuts his roots away and denies that they were ever connected with him withers into half a man.”

“And often he who has chosen the fate of the artist because he felt himself to be different soon realizes that he can maintain neither his art nor his difference unless he admits that he is like the others. The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from.”

“He thought there was no hope for him. Me? I can't imagine a world without hope.”