Some places speak distinctly. Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwrecks; and certain medieval castles use to whisper us that we've lived there before...

About the Paderne Castle: There are places so in harmony with certain impressions of the heart, that nature seems to be part of the soul and the soul of nature, and that if we separate the scene of the drama and the drama of the scene, it loses its color and feeling loses expression. The bonds between places and things are so strong, because nature is one, both in heart and in the eyes of man. We are children of the earth. It's the same the life that runs in its sap, and which circulates in our blood. All that the earth, our mother, seems to try and say to our contemplation with its forms, with its aspects, with its physiognomy, with its sad

My life often seemed to me like a story that has no beginning and no end. I had the feeling that I was an historical fragment, an excerpt for which the preceding and succeeding text was missing. I could well imagine that I might have lived in former centuries and there encountered questions I was not yet able to answer; that I had been born again because I had not fulfilled the task given to me.