Only afterwards you realise, ‘Okay, that was happening. I can suddenly be myself again, I feel relieved and free

It’s wonderful because it’s strange, it’s almost with all that pressure gone, social pressure, political pressure gone, it is actually a wonderful relief

To come to the end of a time of anxiety and fear! To feel the cloud that hung over us lift and disperse—the cloud that dulled the heart and made happiness no more than a memory! This at least is one joy that must have been known by almost every living creature.

That feeling of surrender is there, has to be there. We all want that. We all want to let go. And in that feeling alone… Maybe you call it peace. Maybe you call it satisfaction. Maybe you call it anything. But it’s a feeling of “let go,” when the whole world becomes that tranquil world that’s liveable.

My heart had melted into something akin to a sensation of happiness, peace of mind one might even say, at the realization that I had now reached the very bottom of agony.

You're very young...you haven't got to that yet. But it does come! The blessed relief when you know that you've done with it all - that you haven't got to carry the burden any longer. You'll feel that too someday...

There’s a great feeling when you’re totally resolved. When you make the jump from being lonely to being only. When you’re so totally alone and absolute.

And it feels like, finally.

I feel incredibly lucky to have discovered early in my life, practically when I was a child, that I could do something that in the end I finally wanted to do all my life. It has something to do with being completely removed from oneself, which doesn't necessarily mean one is uncomfortable inside oneself. It just means it's a great relief to be inhabiting somebody else. It can be a tremendously liberating sensation.

When I found that out, I was quite relieved. [...] To have someone be, like, "Oh, actually, you do receive this phenomenal level of abuse," it makes you think, "Oh yeah, OK, I’m not going mad".

Relief from something that you cannot hold within you is always the greatest pleasure, isn’t it? Whatever that thing may be!

When we drop fear, we can draw nearer to people, we can draw nearer to the earth, we can draw nearer to all the heavenly creatures that surround us.

Once you gave up the nervous craving to promote yourself, denigrate others, draw attention to your unique and special qualities, and ensure that you were first in the pecking order, you experienced an immense peace.

An end to my fear of being alone. An end to a soul’s solitude, when death at last arrives. There is something in that, something in there, that comforts.