Only the unknown frightens men. But once a man has faced the unknown, that terror becomes the known.

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born.

Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.

Mais voici qu’aujourd’hui nous avons éprouvé la soif. Et ce puits que nous connaissons, nous découvrons, aujourd’hui seulement, qu’il rayonne sure l’étendue. Une femme invisible peut enchanter ainsi toute une maison. Un puits porte loin, comme l’amour.

I did not know what to say to him. I felt awkward and blundering. I did not know how I could reach him, where I could overtake him and go on hand in hand with him once more.

No destiny attacks us from outside. But, within him, man bears his fate and there comes a moment when he knows himself vulnerable; and then, as in a vertigo, blunder upon blunder lures him.