Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue to exist, a wonderful living side by side can grow up, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.

Letter to Emanuel von Bodman, August 17, 1901. In: Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke, 1892-1910 (W. W. Norton & Company, 1969), p. 57