“It certainly was not my intention to make you suffer, yet I have done so; obviously it never will be my intention to make you suffer, yet I shall always do so.”

Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

What if I slept a little more and forgot about all this nonsense.

Written kisses don’t reach their destination, rather they are drunk on the way by the ghosts.

Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

You misinterpret everything, even the silence.

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.

Last night I dreamed about you. What happened in detail I can hardly remember, all I know is that we kept merging into one another. I was you, you were me. Finally you somehow caught fire.

Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm.

Believing in progress does not mean believing that any progress has yet been made.

The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.

Even if no salvation should come, I want to be worthy of it at every moment.

They say ignorance is bliss, they’re wrong

You can choose to be free , but it’s last decision you’ll ever make

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

I am free and that is why I am lost.

Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.

One who is injured ought not to return the injury, for on no account can it be right to do an injustice; and it is not right to return an injury, or to do evil to any man, however much we have suffered from him.

Whenever you do something that is not aligned with the yearning or your soul – you create suffering.

Attachment leads to suffering.

Suffering is a gift. In it is hidden mercy.

90% of the work in this country is done by people who don’t feel good.

There is quite enough sorrow and shame and suffering and baseness in real life, and there is no need for meeting it unnecessarily in fiction.

Nonviolent action, born of the awareness of suffering and nurtured by love, is the most effective way to confront adversity.