“Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,because the mass man will mock it right away.I praise what is truly alive,what longs to be burned to death.In the calm water of the love-nights,where you were begotten, where you have begotten,a strange feeling comes over you,when you see the silent candle burning.Now you are no longer caughtin the obsession with darkness,and a desire for higher love-makingsweeps you upward.Distance does not make you falter.Now, arriving in magic, flying,and finally, insane for the light,you are the butterfly and you are gone.And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow,you are only a troubled gueston the dark earth.”

“As long as you have not grasped that you have to die to grow, you are a troubled guest on the dark earth".”

“That's the way it is when you love. It makes you suffer, and I have suffered much in the years since. But it matters little that you suffer, so long as you feel alive with a sense of the close bond that connects all living things, so long as love does not die!”

“What you describe is how it happens to everyone: magic does slide through you, and disappear, and come back later looking like something else. And I'm sorry to tell you this, but where your magic lives will always be a great dark space with scraps you fumble for. You must learn to sniff them out in the dark.”

“Emma leaned over to where their faces were only inches apart. “Since you think you know everything, tell me if you understand this. Have you ever wanted something so bad you think you’d die if you don’t have it? That the mere thought of it keeps you up at night. You can’t sleep, you can’t eat, you can’t drink. You are so consumed by that desire nothing else matters, and you’re not sure life is worth living if you can’t have it.”

“The tamer my love, the farther away it is from love. In fierceness, in heat, in longing, in risk, I find something of love's nature. In my desire for you, I burn at the right temperature to walk through love's fire. So when you ask me why I cannot love you more calmly, I answer that to love you calmly is not to love you at all.”