“Perhaps an individual must consider his own death to be the final phenomenon of nature.”

“Natural talent is a questionable phenomenon. Inclination perhaps, but innate ability is extremely rare.”

“...there must be an inviolate place where the choices and decisions, however imperfect, are the writer's own, where the decision must be as individual and solitary as birth or death.”

“Each man is everything to himself, for with his death everything is dead for him. That is why each of us thinks he is everything to everyone. We must not judge nature by ourselves, but by its own standards.”

“As always the thought of his own death calmed him as much as that of others disturbed him: was it perhaps because, when all was said and done, his own death would in the first place mean that of the whole world?”

“For no one should consider anything his own, except perhaps a lie, since all truth is from Him who said, "I am the truth.”