“In my brain were stored a thousand pictures.”

“A thousand times I was ready to regret and take back my rash statement - yet it had been the truth.”

“I understood it all. I understood Pablo. I understood Mozart, and somewhere behind me I heard his ghastly laughter. I knew that all the hundred thousand pieces of life's game were in my pocket. A glimpse of its meaning had stirred my reason and I was determined to begin the game afresh. I would sample its tortures once more and shudder again at its senselessness. I would traverse not once more, but often, the hell of my inner being.”

“His life oscillates, as everyone's does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousands and thousands.”

“With a thousand eyes, the river looked at him”

“This little theater of mine has as many doors into as many boxes as you please, ten or a hundred thousand, and behind each door exactly what you seek awaits you. It is a pretty cabinet of pictures, my dear friend; but it would be quite useless to go through it as you are. You would be checked and blinded by it at every turn by what you are pleased to call your personality. You have no doubt guessed long since that the conquest of time and the escape from reality, or however else it may be that you choose to describe your longing, means simply the wish to be relieved of your so-called personality. That is the prison where you lie.”

“I havetransported many, thousands; and to all of them, my river has beennothing but an obstacle on their travels. They travelled to seek moneyand business, and for weddings, and on pilgrimages, and the river wasobstructing their path, and the ferryman's job was to get them quicklyacross that obstacle. But for some among thousands, a few, four orfive, the river has stopped being an obstacle, they have heard itsvoice, they have listened to it, and the river has become sacred tothem, as it has become sacred to me.”