How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.

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In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to the details around us.

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I really don't advise a woman who wants to have things her own way to get married

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You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

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The only advice ... that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.

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One must learn to be silent just as one must learn to talk.

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Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

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We are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.

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Intimacy is a difficult art.

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A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.

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