“Better was it to go unknown and leave behind you an arch, then to burn like a meteor and leave no dust.”

“We do not know our own souls, let alone the souls of others. Human beings do not go hand in hand the whole stretch of the way. There is a virgin forest in each; a snowfield where even the print of birds' feet is unknown. Here we go alone, and like it better so. Always to have sympathy, always to be accompanied, always to be understood would be intolerable.”

“People should not leave looking-glasses hanging in their rooms any more then they should leave open cheque books or letters confessing some hideous crime.”

“Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title.”

“Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing.”

“The wind blew, from what quarter I know not, but it lifted the half-grown leaves so that there was a flash of silver-grey in the air. It was the time between the lights when colors undergo their intensification and purples and golds burn in windowpanes like the beat of an excitable heart; when for some reason the beauty of the world revealed and yet soon to perish ... has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.”

“Up here my eyes are green leaves, unseeing.”