"Conflicted creatures, that’s what we [parents] are — we give birth, without knowing to what; we educate, without knowing whom; we must answer for it… - Lou Andreas-Salomé

For the angels [of the Duino Elegies] are not intermediaries, and that is important. For him there were no mediating saints or redeemers, although the name of the angels may have come from his Catholic childhood. For him God remained for all time the designation for the all-embracing unity. If in The Book of Hours God is addressed only as a “neighbor,” it is because the slightest removal from him would pose an absolute and hopelessly insurmountable distance. What is presented here, instead, before the dominion of the heavens over the earth, is the horizon of angels, an optically unifying illusion. -- Kindle p. 85

"But this danger you mention?" he went on. "Tell me, where is there beauty that isn't at the same time in danger? -- and when wasn't the greatest beauty also the greatest danger! -- And mind you: this know-it-all attitude and drive to control, the 'firm hand' you were talking about -- all that arrogance, especially of the usual, masculine kind, will go to pieces trying to deal with this! That approach is only best right from the start and with women who are no threat to anyone. But -- please tell me -- what's so great about a manly stance that has to look out for itself, that's so anxiously self-defensive?" -- Marcus, p. 180

Hildegard sensed darkly that she would now at once have to spread two light gray wings and let them lift her up -- high, high, as in her dream. But she also sensed darkly how it is in feverish dreams: as though something in her were helplessly, powerlessly beating its wings -- and suddenly she didn't know whether she was flying -- or falling --. Then Dietrich drew the playing child to him. He looked at Hildegard, almost a bit timidly -- and at the same time gently kissed the child on his blond hair. And Hildegard slowly laid her hand in his. Reaching out over a paradise. -- ("Paradise"), p. 132