“We are not allowed to linger, even with what is most intimate.”

“If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. 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.”

“If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.”

“we want it visible to showwhen even the most visible joy will reveal itselfonly when we have transformed it within.there’s nowhere, my love, the world can existexpect within.”

“And we, spectators always, everywhere,looking at, never out of, everything!It fills us. We arrange it. It collapses.We re-arrange it, and collapse ourselves.Who's turned us round like this, so that we always,do what we may, retain the attitudeof someone who's departing? Just as he,on the last hill, that shows him all his valleyfor the last time, will turn and stop and linger,we live our lives, for ever taking leave.”

“If no one else, the dying must notice how unreal, how full of pretense, is all that we accomplish here, where nothing is allowed to be itself.”

“There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.”