“It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each ot...” — Hermann Hesse Quote

It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

If I know what love is, it is because of you.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge - that is everywhere.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

It's the relationship I have with the world: always trying to escape from reality. I'm a daydreamer; I don't feel in harmony with my epoch or the societies I live in.

Are we really going to accept the situation where the government of Lithuania has more power over our trading relationship with the Commonwealth than our government does? That is the reality of the customs union.

Real intimacy is only possible to the degree that we can be honest about what we are doing and feeling.

That balance between involvement and detachment is what novelists do. It's the ideal relationship between a novelist and a character, I think, total involvement and identity and empathy, stopping short of being autobiographical - in my case, anyway - but also quite detached.