“Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is hidden, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. … When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.”
Memories, Dreams, Reflections, page 4