“We are, on earth, two distinct races. Those who have need of others, whom others amuse, engage soothe, whom solitude harasses, pains, stupefies, like the movement of a terrible glacier or the traversing of the desert; and those, on the contrary, whom others weary, tire, bore, silently torture, whom isolation calms and bathes in the repose of independency, and plunges into the humors of their own thoughts. In fine, there is here a normal, physical phenomenon. Some are constituted to live a life outside of themselves, others, to live a life within themselves. As for me, my exterior associations are abruptly and painfully short-lived, and, as they reach their limits, I experience in my whole body and in my whole intelligence an intolerable uneasiness. ”

“There is a god in whom I do not believeYet to this god my love stretches,This god whom I do not believe in isMy whole life, my life and I am his.Everything that I have of pleasure and pain(Of pain, of bitter pain and men's contempt)I give this god for him to feed uponAs he is my whole life and I am his.When I am dead I hope that he will eatEverything I have been and have not beenAnd crunch and feed upon it and grow fatEating my life all up as it is his.- God the Eater”

“There is no pain equal to that which two lovers can inflict on one another... It is when we begin to hurt those whom we love that the guilt with which we are born becomes intolerable, and since all those whom we love intensely and continuously grow part of us, and since we hate ourselves in them, so we torture ourselves and them together.”

“As soon as I get a ship that can take to the open seas, I'm going to find and rescue and - if there's any worth in me - marry the only woman in whom I can see both a body and a face, and with whom I need not resign one or the other of my own.”

“The Savior taught His disciples, 'For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it' (Luke 9:24)."I believe the Savior is telling us that unless we lose ourselves in service to others, there is little purpose to our own lives. Those who live only for themselves eventually shrivel up and figuratively lose their lives, while those who lose themselves in service to others grow and flourish—and in effect save their lives.”

“I went from one to the other holding my sorrow - no, not my sorrow but theincomprehensible nature of this our life - for their inspection. Some people goto priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek amongphrases and fragments something unbroken - I to whom there is no beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all,yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, sounspeakably lonely.”