It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

When I worked on a magazine, I learned that there are many, many writers writing that can’t write at all; and they keep on writing all the cliches and bromides and 1890 plots, and poems about Spring and poems about Love, and poems they think are modern because they are done in slang or staccato style, or written with all the ‚i’s‘ small.

I mean, if you didn’t get it or if you didn’t feel like you enjoyed it, sometimes that experience can change.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

My grandfather was smart and had a whole lot of pride. He didn’t speak a terrible amount, but you could tell there was a ton on his mind – like a quiet acceptance of how life had turned out.

But to me nothing – the negative, the empty – is exceedingly powerful.

Coaching wouldn’t be for me. No, certainly not.

If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose.

Everyone assumes I practise all of my own laws but I don’t. I think anybody who did would be a horrible ugly person to be around.

Lena Waithe won an Emmy for writing while starring on the Netflix show ‚Master of None,‘ but it might be more accurate to call her a Master of Everything.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.

The only passion that guides me is for the truth… I look at everything from this point of view.

How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

What you have outside you counts less than what you have inside you.

I write all my sermons.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

We are the most amazing creatures that this world has ever produced, but we seem to also have this herd mentality; we seem to be the most stupid, also.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

Your emotions are very unstable and should never be the foundation for direction in your life.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

People like to build their own story about my life. I don’t know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.

Goodness is the only investment that never fails.

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

I’m not concerned with people seeing me in a certain way. Some people see me as a kid, some people see me as an adult. But I’m seriously not going to complain how anybody sees me, as long as they see me.

Know that any and all thoughts that you have regarding your own skills, interests, and inclinations are valid. To reinforce the validity of your thoughts, keep them private. Tell yourself that they’re between you and God.

If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn’t need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure, only death can stop it.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Do everything as in the eye of another.

Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

The moment a person forms a theory, his imagination sees in every object only the traits which favor that theory.

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

When you are young you tend to do so many things that are not needed. When you get experience, you know what exactly what works for you and you tend to do things that you want.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

I was saving the name of ‚Geisel‘ for the Great American Novel.

I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

When I left Dortmund, I said it’s not important what people think when you come in but what they think when you leave.

I’m not generally a sensitive person, but I tend to be more sensitive toward others and what they’re going through. I don’t know if that’s the healthiest thing, but it’s the truth.

What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

Don’t ever play yourself.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

I’ve never professed to be anything but an average student.

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

Beauty is the promise of happiness.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

I believe that there are many herbs and many trees that are worth much in Europe for dyes and for medicines; but I do not know, and this causes me great sorrow. Arriving at this cape, I found the smell of the trees and flowers so delicious that it seemed the pleasantest thing in the world.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

Of all the senses, sight must be the most delightful.