Life is our dictionary.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Everything is funny, as long as it’s happening to somebody else.

Life’s short. Anything could happen, and it usually does, so there is no point in sitting around thinking about all the ifs, ands and buts.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation.

I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.

My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.

There is no wealth but life.

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

If you’re doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality. But you really don’t know what was going on in the person’s mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin.

In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.

I always was a rich person because money’s not related to happiness.

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

Our lifelong certainties about the world can be demolished in a single second.

I love life because what more is there?

I’m an idealist without illusions.

Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.

As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

My friends ask me if I want more kids, and I always say yes, I want more; it’s the best thing you can have in your life.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

Everybody is going to have their critics. It’s easy to get discouraged in life.

Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so.

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.

Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

Keep in mind that no matter how perfectly you get your life in order, you will never be rid of all your problems. Problems are a way of life, always have been, always will be. But how you elect to view those problems is all up to you.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

There really is no difference between the bully and the victim.

I am not a self-help writer. I am a self-problem writer. When people read my books, I provoke some things. I cannot justify my work. I do my work; it is up to them to classify it, to judge.

Sooner or later we’re all someone’s dog.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

Censorship is the tool of those who have the need to hide actualities from themselves and from others. Their fear is only their inability to face what is real, and I can’t vent any anger against them; I only feel this appalling sadness. Somewhere in their upbringing, they were shielded against the total facts of our existence.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Woe to the makers of literal translations, who by rendering every word weaken the meaning! It is indeed by so doing that we can say the letter kills and the spirit gives life.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

It is a terrible thing to see and have no vision.