“

Why do I once again turn to writing?
Beloved, one mustn’t ask such a clear question,
For the truth is, I have nothing to tell you,
All the same, your dear hands will touch this note.

[quote above from The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe]

Young Werther’s inquiry as to why one writes a love letter reveals a paradoxical dimension inherent in any amorous correspondence: a letter is like a signifier that can convey an amorous message even though it may be empty or say nothing at all. It is the instrument of a tactile extension just as it transmits the language of devotion. Roland Barthes, distinguishes, in fact, between two forms of love notes: there is the amorous correspondence, where one seeks to “defend positions, insure conquests, [and thereby] articulate the image of the Other in various points that the letter will try to touch,” and there is the love letter proper, where one is purely affectionate, engaging the Other in a “relationship, not a correspondence.” The enterprise of writing amorously can thus be “both empty (encoded) and expressive (laden with a yearning to express one’s desire).” A note sent to the object of one’s affections is a deliberate extension of one’s language, an attempt to touch the Other (“as if my words were fingers”) despite the message conveyed: the irreducible “I love you.” In a letter, words need say nothing at all, “save that it is to you that I tell this nothing” and, paradoxically, it is via this “nothing” that one overcomes the Other’s absence.

“Even after all this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens
with a little love like that.
It lights up the whole sky.”

“The third quality that is needed for a scientist to become a public icon is wisdom. Besides being a famous joker and a famous genius, Feynman was also a wise human being whose answers to serious questions made sense. To me and to hundreds of other students who came to him for advice, he spoke truth. Like Einstein and Hawking, he had come through times of great suffering, nursing Arline through her illness and watching her die, and emerged stronger. Behind his enormous zest and enjoyment of life was an awareness of tragedy, a knowledge that our time on earth is short and precarious. The public made him into an icon because he was not only a great scientist and a great clown but also a great human being and a guide in time of trouble. Other Feynman books have portrayed him as a scientific wizard and as a storyteller. This collection of letters shows us for the first time the son caring for his father and mother, the father caring for his wife and children, the teacher caring for his students, the writer replying to people throughout the world who wrote to him about their problems and received his full and undivided attention.”

“When I was younger I dated older women because they knew what love is. Now that I’m older I date women young enough to have not forgotten it.”

“Not enough! - It is not enough to prove something, one also has to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!”

“‎Sometimes people beg me to certify their understanding of the dharma. As long as you have to ask others for their approval, you’re not authentic. Still there are some who believe they’ve got satori because someone else gave them a certificate for it. If you’re already there, why ask others for directions?
You’ve heard that wine makes people drunk, and now you’re pretending your drunk and believe that you’ve really drunk wine. That’s also one of these forms of ‘satori’.”

“People ask what are my intentions with my films— my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct. I prefer to describe what I would like my aim to be. There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed— master builders, artists, labourers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.
 Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; ‘eternal values,’ ‘immortality’ and ‘masterpiece’ were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility. Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.
 The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other’s eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.
 We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster’s whim and the purest ideal. Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon’s head, an angel, a devil— or perhaps a saint— out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts.
 Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.”

“At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Hesse registered himself as a volunteer with the Imperial army, saying that he could not sit inactively by a warm fireplace while other young authors were dying on the front. He was however, found unfit for combat duty, but was assigned to service involving the care of war prisoners. In September 1914, Hesse wrote an essay entitled “O Friends, Not These Tones” (“O Freunde, nicht diese Töne”), which was published in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, on November 3. In this essay he appealed to German intellectuals not to fall for patriotism. He called for subdued voices and a recognition of Europe’s common heritage. What followed from this, Hesse later indicated, was a great turning point in his life: For the first time, he found himself in the middle of a serious political conflict, attacked by the German press, the recipient of hate mail, and distanced from old friends. He did receive continued support from his friend Theodor Heuss, and the French writer Romain Rolland, who visited Hesse in August 1915. In 1917, Hesse wrote to Rolland, “The attempt…to apply love to matters political has failed.”