“I might be a beast astray, with no sense of its environment, yet there was some meaning in my foolish life, something in me gave an answer and was the receiver of those distant calls from worlds far above.”

“The honest answer is more complex. On some level I was sent. Or inspired. Or called. But my calling, such as it was, wasn't a single booming invitation from above (really, is it ever?)...”

“I am in truth the Steppenwolf that I often call myself; that beast astray that finds neither home nor joy nor nourishment in a world that is strange and incomprehensible to him.”

“What do I know about God and the purpose of life? I know that this world exists. That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field. That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning. This meaning does not lie in it but outside of it. That life is the world. That my will penetrates the world. That my will is good or evil. Therefore that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world.The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God. And connect with this the comparison of God to a father.”

“Please make me empty, if I'm empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I'm not alone! I cannot bear this loneliness. Above all it is loneliness.”

“The question that lay before me, and I had so far failed to answer, was the way these connections might best be expressed. My mind was filled with possibilities but I had no real sense of how all that I knew was arrayed and dispersed; no sense of the pattern.”