“All the soarings of my mind begin in my blood.”

“Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.And without feet I can make my way to you,without a mouth I can swear your name.Break off my arms, I'll take hold of youwith my heart as with a hand.Stop my heart, and my brain will start to beat.And if you consume my brain with fire,I'll feel you burn in every drop of my blood.”

“I love the dark hours of my being.My mind deepens into them.There I can find, as in old letters,the days of my life, already lived,and held like a legend, and understood.”

“That's my window. This minuteSo gently did I alightFrom sleep--was still floating in it.Where has my life its limitAnd where begins the night?I could fancy all things around meWere nothing but I as yet;Like a crystal's depth, profoundlyMute, translucent, unlit.I have space to spare inside meFor the stars, too: so full of roomFeels my heart; so lightlyWould it let go of him, whomFor all I know I have startedTo love, it may be to hold.Strange, as if never charted,Stares my fortune untold.Why is it I am beddedBeneath this infinitude,Fragrant like a meadow,Hither and thither moved,Calling out, yet fearingSomeone might hear the cry,Destined to disappearingWithin another I.”

“I am thinking of a summer on the Baltic when I was a child: how talkative I was to sea and forest; how, filled with unaccustomed exuberance, I tried to leap over all limits with the hasty excitement of my words. And how, as I had to take my leave on a morning in September, I saw that we never give utterance to what is final and most blessed, and that all my rhapsodic Table d’hote conversations did not approach either my inchoate feelings or the ocean’s eternal self-revelation.”

“So it's back once more, back up the slope.Why do they always ruin my ropewith their cuts?I felt so ready the other day,Had a real foretaste of eternityIn my guts.Spoonfeeding me yet another sipfrom life's cup.I don't want it, won't take any more of it.Let me throw up.Life is medium rare and good, I see,And the world full of soup and bread,But it won't pass into the blood for me,Just goes to my head.It makes me ill, though others it feeds;Do see that I must deny it!For a thousand years from now at leastI'm keeping a diet.”

“It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.”