Bonhoeffer on the need for others

"It's remarkable how we think at such times about the people that we should not like to live without, and almost or entirely forget about ourselves. It is only then that we feel how closely our own lives are bound up with other people's, and in fact how the centre of our own lives is outside ourselves, and how little we are separate entities. The 'as though it were a part of me' is perfectly true... I think it is a literal fact of nature that human life extends far beyond our physical existence. Probably a mother feels this more strongly than anyone else."

Letter from prison to parents after allied bombing raid on Berlin, 5 September 1943.