Demian

Even if I had my doubts, the whole experience of my childhood had taught me enough about the reality of a pious life, a life like my parents’, to know it was neither undignified nor hypocritical. I had the deepest respect for religion, the same as before.

What belonged to this world was gently shining radiance, clarity, and cleanliness; quiet, friendly conversation

he is also the unique, entirely particular, and in every case meaningful and remarkable point of intersection where the phenomena of the world overlap, only once and never again in just this way. That is why everyone’s story is important, eternal, and godlike—why everyone, as long as and in whatever fashion he lives and fulfills the will of Nature, is wonderful and worthy of all our attention

All I wanted to do was try to live the life that was inside me, trying to get out. Why was that so hard?

She was an ocean and I was a river pouring into her; she was a star and I was another star hurtling toward her, and we met, felt drawn to each other, stayed close to each other, and orbited blissfully around each other in tight, singing circles for all eternity.

How happy I am!” I said to her, and I kissed her hands. “I feel like I have been on a journey my whole life—and now I’ve come home.”
She smiled a maternal smile.
“No one can ever go home,” came her friendly reply. “But when friends’ paths meet, the whole world can look like home for a time.”

I just live in my dreams, that’s what you noticed. Other people live in dreams too, but they’re not their own dreams, that’s the difference.”

When we hate someone, what we hate is something in him, or in our image of him, that is part of ourselves. Nothing that isn’t in us ever bothers us.”

I was an unusual young man then, around eighteen years old—precocious in a hundred ways but very far behind and helpless in a hundred other ways. When I compared myself to other people my age, as I would do every now and then, I sometimes felt proud and conceited but just as often demoralized and depressed. There were many times I saw myself as a genius, many times as half insane. I was never able to share and join in the others’ pleasures, and I was eaten up with worries and self-hatred about how hopelessly isolated I was from them, how cut off from life.

The force that hurls you into flight is the great treasure trove of our humanity, which we all possess. It is the feeling of connection with the roots of all power. But it gets scary in a hurry! It’s damned dangerous! That’s why most people are so happy to renounce flying. They’d rather stay safe on the sidewalk, following the rules. But not you. You keep flying, the way a brave fellow should.