“Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I togetherBut when I look ahead up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside youGliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether a man or a woman-But who is that on the other side of you?”

“Yet when we came back, from the hyacinth garden,Yours arms full, and your hair wet, I could notSpeak, and my eyes failed, I was neitherLiving nor dead, and I knew nothing.Looking into the heart of light, the silence.Oed und leer das Meer ('waste and empty in the sea')""I rememberThose are pearls that were his eyes.""Who is the third who walks always beside you?When I count, there are only you and I togetherBut when I look ahead, up the white roadThere is always another one walking beside you,Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hoodedI do not know whether a man or a womanBut who is that on the other side of you?”

“We should always have three friends in our lives-one who walks ahead who we look up to and follow; one who walks beside us, who is with us every step of our journey; and then, one who we reach back for and bring along after we've cleared the way.”

“But Ludmilla is always at least one step ahead of you. “I like to know that book exists that I will still be able to read…” she says, sure that existent objects, concrete albeit unknown, must correspond to the strength of her desire. How can you keep up with her, this woman who is always reading another book besides the one before her eyes, a book that does not yet exist, but which, since she wants it, cannot fail to exist?”

“I accept you as you are, and I will always hold you close in my heart. I will walk beside you forever. (Fang)”

“I am not I.I am this onewalking beside me whom I do not see,whom at times I manage to visit,and whom at other times I forget;who remains calm and silent while I talk,and forgives, gently, when I hate,who walks where I am not,who will remain standing when I die.”