aleph

“The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas.”
― Hermann Hesse, Demian: Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend

“Rather than working and becoming a socially responsible person, rather than listening to my wife's lectures, I wanted to be as idle as the idlest animal on earth. I wanted to cast off as much as possible the meaningless mask of humanity.
I was shy of human society. I was shy of life. Everything was strange and unfamiliar to me.”
― Yi Sang, The Wings

“Have you ever heard of 'a genius who had been stuffed and preserved'?”
― Yi Sang, The Wings

“I am also planning a life with a woman. I am a person who has become unfamiliar with the art of love, someone who has caught a glimpse of the very summit of human intellect; in other words, a kind of mentally excitable person. What I mean is that I am planning a life which will accept only a half of this woman - which is in fact the half of everything. I will put only one foot in this life and my two halves will face each other like the two suns and giggle. All the activities of life seem unbearably dull to me and I have renounced them. Good-bye!”
― Yi Sang, The Wings