Love can be begged, bought, or received as a gift, one can find it in the street, but one cannot steal it. - Hermann Hesse

All existence seemed to be based on duality, on contrast. Either one was a man or one was a woman, either a wanderer or sedentary burgher, either a thinking person or a feeling person-no one could breathe in at the same time as he breathed out, be a man as well as a woman, experience freedom as well as order, combine instinct and mind. One always had to pay for one with the loss of the other, and one thing was always just as important and desirable as the other.

It is you I have been able to love, you alone in all the world. You can have no idea of what that means. It means a spring in the desert, a blossoming tree in the wilderness.

Although he had reached a high stage of self-discipline and bore his last wound well, he now felt as if these ordinary people were his brothers. Their vanities, desires, and trivialities no longer seemed absurd to him; they had become understandable, lovable, and even worthy of respect.