“How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.”

“Ten thousand fools proclaim themselves into obscurity, while one wise man forgets himself into immortality.”

“He was then sixty-two years old, an age by which most men are in the grave or at least occupying a chair in Death's antechamber.”

“To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.”

“We wonder how people can't see the most obvious things about themselves, yet we forget those people are us.”

“And still it is not enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many, and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not until they have turned to blood within us, to glance, to gesture, nameless and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves - not until then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them.”