The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world.

A disenchantment falsified and blunted my usual feelings and joys: the garden lacked fragrance, the woods held no attraction for me, the world stood around me like a clearance sale of last year’s secondhand goods, insipid, all its charm gone. Books were so much paper, music a grating noise. That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits.

I have always been a great dreamer. In dreams I have always been more active than in my real life, and these shadows sapped me of my health and energy.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.