Demian is a coming-of-age story. I read it because I loved Steppenwolf and Siddhartha, but I had to endure the fact that James Franco wrote the introduction to my copy. It was pretty good! Got a little too mystical for me towards the end. Here are some selections I liked:
"Every person is more than himself: he is also the unique, entirely particular, and in every case meaningful and remarkable point of intersection where the phenomena of the world overlap, only once and never again in just this way. That is why everyone's story is important, eternal, and godlike -- why everyone, as long as and in whatever fashion he lives and fulfills the will of Nature, is wonderful and worthy of all our attention. Everyone is the spirit made flesh; in everyone, creation takes form and suffers[...]."
"I cannot claim to posess any knowledge. I was a seeker, and still am. But I no longer look to the stars, or seek in books; I have started to hear the lessons roared and murmured by the blood in my body."
"It was up to me to finish growing up and find my own way; I did it badly, like most well-raised children."
"I did what I had to do because I had no idea what else I could try."
"If the world has no use for people like me, if it can find no better place or higher task for them, then so much for us. But it would be the world's loss."
"We are human beings. We make gods and then wrestle with them, and they bless us."
"Every person's true calling was only to arrive at himself. He might end up a poet or a madman, a prophet or a criminal -- that was no concern of his; in the end it was meaningless. His concern was to find his own fate, not a random one, and to live it out, full and complete."
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