Of silence, I can say only what I heard, that all things are known by that which they make or leave–and so speech isn’t itself, but its effect, and silence is the same.

En sevdiği oyuncağıydı. Neydi? Kırmızıya boyanmış, ufak, tahta bir kuş. Kırmızıydı, gerçekten öyleydi; tam da gün ışığında, gölgede, mumlarla, şöminenin başında ona bakan bir oğlan çocuğunu hayallere daldıracak, parlak, tatlı bir kırmızı. Ama muhabbetkuşu ya...

…There are times when something is asked of us, and we find we must do it. There is no calculation involved, no measure of the necessity of the thing itself, the action that must be...

If he acts, if he doesn’t, it’s meaningless. The whole thing goes forward. No one is important. No one at all.

The action of a thing is the same as the naming of it – is, in fact, the real name. The trees creak and they are saying, ‘trees creak through the long night.’ The long...

That would be the death of anyone – to recognize false hopes with a certainty. One mustn’t know that. If it is offered, refuse!

Not that believing such things has anything to do with whether they are true. You see that, don’t you?

I’m an elephant today. I will need to have lots of room and also a bowl of water on the floor.

…In this way that he sought to control the very passage of his life, deftly and without forethought, yet precisely and with enormous care. Part of it was to allow what was enormous, what was...