Hermann Hesse Quotes

We move through the day like two hands of a clock: sometimes we overlap for a moment, then come apart again, carrying on alone. Everyday exactly the same: the tea, the burnt toast, the crumbs, the silence.

I lead an introverted and boring life here in California.

I'm a somewhat isolated person in my own way, or I move along a little trail, I go this place, I go that place. It's not like I'm varying my exposure.

I'm a provincial. I live very much like a hermit: reading, listening to music, working in the cutting room, writing, commercial work - which doesn't take up that much time.

I wake up, go for dance class, and do the same things that I used to do. I am very asocial. I don't go out too often.

I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.

The musty smell, the bugs, the lonliness, this room, which is part of the street outside-this is all I want from life.

It is June. This is what I have decided to do with my life just now. I will do this work and lead this life, the one I am leading today. Each morning the blue clock and the crocheted bedspread, the table with the Phone, the books and magazines, the Times at the door.

If only they would all just leave me alone with my books and my letters, I would be content to let life, and the world pass me by

She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug of weak herb tea which is now her substitute for coffee. At one time she thought that she could not live without coffee, but it turned out that it is really the warm large mug she wants in her hands, that is the aid to thought or whatever it is she practices through the procession of hours, or of days.

In a way, a jail is a place where you can rest, read books and live with yourself.

I'm going to go home. Everything is going to be normal again. Boring again. Wonderful again.

This is my report on how to live... They say the best way is just to live one day at a time... If you try to live seven days at a time, the week will be over before you know it.

Books. I'd probably spend all my time alone and lost in books if I could. It's easier that way.

Give me, kind heaven, a private station, a mind serene for contemplation.

The evening passes somehow; I watch television with Nancy, or I write. It is difficult, not having a family, and it is difficult to explain. I always go to bed early. And I am always ready for Monday morning, that time that other people dread.

To say that she had a book is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilizing quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of lightness in her situation, which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to dispel.

It is my private life which no one knows anything about, nor ever will. It needs more than half my time if it is to be a success.

People say strange things, the boy thought. Sometimes it's better to be with the sheep, who don't say anything. And better still to be alone with one's books. They tell their incredible stories at the time when you want to hear them. But when you're talking to people, they say some things that are so strange that you don't know how to continue the conversation.

Time, where did you go? / Why did you leave me here alone? / Wait, don't go so fast / I'm missing the moments as they pass

You're never alone when you're reading a book.

He looks at me, and I don't know what he sees. I used to think it was Rose. But she's not here with us now, in this room. It's just him and me, and the books. I feel like our lives are in those books. I feel like all the words on the pages are for us.

We preferred our own way of living. We were no expense to the government. All we wanted was peace and to be left alone.

I want to stop. I want to stay on Fårö, and read the books I haven’t read, find out things I haven’t yet found out. I want to write things I haven’t written. To listen to music, and talk to my neighbors. To live together with my wife a very calm, very secure, very lazy existence, for the rest of my life.

I live absolutely like an oyster.