“Look: the trees exist; the houseswe dwell in stand there stalwartly. Only wepass by it all, like a rush of air.And everything conspires to keep quiet about us,half out of shame perhaps, half out of some secret hope.”

“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.”

“The park is high. And as out of a houseI step out of its glimmering half-lightinto openness and evening. Into the wind,the same wind that the clouds feel,the bright rivers and the turning millsthat stand slowly grinding at the sky's edge.Now I too am a thing held in its hand,the smallest thing under the sky. --Look:Is that one sky?: Blissfully lucid blue,into which ever purer clouds throng,and under it all white in endless changes,and over it that huge, thin-spun gray,pulsing warmly as on red underpaint,and over everything this silent radianceof a setting sun. Miraculous structure,moved within itself and upheld by itself,shaping figures, giant wings, faultsand high mountain ridges before the first starand suddenly, there: a gate into suchdistances as perhaps only birds know...”

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”

“How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.”

“Keep growing quietly and seriously throughout your whole development; you cannot disturb it more rudely than by looking outward and expecting from outside replies to questions that only your inmost feeling in your most hushed hour can perhaps answer.”

“But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all.”