“If there is nothing you can share with other people, try to be close to Things. Things will not abandon you. The nights are still there, and the winds that move through the trees and across many lands. Everything in the world of Things and animals is filled with being, of which you are part.”

“Everything in the world of things and animals is still filled with happening, which you can take part in.”

“If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.”

“And you must be indulgent with the answer, which will perhaps often leave you empty-handed; for ultimately, and precisely in the deepest and most important matters, we are unspeakably alone; and many things must happen, many things must go right, a whole constellation of events must be fulfilled, for one human being to successfully advise or help another.”

“No, no, one can imagine nothing in the world, not the least thing. Everything is composed of so many isolated details that are not to be foreseen. In one's imagining one passes over them and hasty as one is doesn't notice that they are missing. But realities are slow and indescribably detailed.”

“Ask no one to speak of you, not even contemptuously. And when time passes and you notice how your name is spreading around among people, don't take it more seriously than any of the other things you find on their lips. Think: your name has turned bad, and get rid of it. Take on another, any other, so that God can call you in the night. And conceal it from everyone.”

“Lovers, if Angels could understand them, might utterstrange things in the midnight air. For it seems that everything'strying to hide us. Look, the trees exist; the houseswe live in still stand where they were. We onlypass everything by like a transposition of air.And all combines to suppress us, partly as shame,perhaps, and partly as inexpressible hope.”