Why have to be human? Oh not because happiness exists. Not out of curiosity, not as practice for the heart. But because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. Us, the most fleeting of all. Once for each thing. Just once; no more. And we too, just once. And never again. But to have been this once, completely, even if only once: to have been at one with the earth, seems beyond undoing. (tr: Stephen Mitchell)