“The fact that there is nothing but a spiritual world deprives us of hope and gives us certainty.”

“Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope--but not for us.”

“There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.”

“The fact that our task is exactly commensurate with our life gives it the appearance of being infinite.”

“I believe that we should only read those books that bite and sting us. If a book does not rouse us with a blow then why read it?”

“We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”

“I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe.”