Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound a… - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

لا شيء، أبدا، في الواقع، يحل محل الرفيق المفقود. لا نستطيع أن نخلق قدامى الرفاق. لا شيء يوازي كنز تلك الذكريات المشتركة، وتلك الساعات العسيرة التي عشناها معا، بما فيها من الخلافات، والمصالحات، ونزوات القلب. مثل تلك الصداقات لا تبنى من جديد. وهل نرتجي، لو غرسنا سنديانة، أن نستظل أوراقها بعد أمد قصير؟

I had thought myself lost, had touched the very bottom of despair; and then, when the spirit of renunciation had filled me, I had known peace. I know now what I was not conscious of at the time — that in such an hour a man feels that he has finally found himself and has become his own friend. An essential inner need has been satisfied, and against that satisfaction, that self-fulfilment, no external power can prevail. Bonnafous, I imagine, he who spent: his life racing before the wind, was acquainted with this serenity of spirit. Guillaumet, too, in his snows. Never shall I forget that, lying buried to the chin in sand, strangled slowly to death by thirst, my heart was infinitely warm beneath the desert stars. What can men do to make known to themselves this sense of deliverance? Everything about mankind is paradox. He who strives and conquers grows soft. The magnanimous man grown rich becomes mean. The creative artist for whom everything is made easy nods. Every doctrine swears that it can breed men, but none can tell us in advance what sort of men it will breed. Men are not cattle to be fattened for market. In the scales of life an indigent Newton weighs more than a parcel of prosperous nonentities. All of us have had the experience of a sudden joy that came when nothing in the world had forewarned us of its coming — a joy so thrilling that if it was born of misery we remembered even the misery with tenderness.

Wait for a time, exactly under the star. Then, if a little man appears who laughs, who has golden hair and refuses to answer questions, you will know who he is, If this should happen, please comfort me. Send me word that he has come back.