One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

Traveling around the world and preaching for over 70 years did not give much time for reflection.

Looking back on the production of ‚Nevermind,‘ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

Cycling can be lonely, but in a good way. It gives you a moment to breathe and think, and get away from what you’re working on.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Maybe ‚loner‘ is too strong a word, but I’ve always enjoyed being on my own.

A man is born alone and dies alone; and he experiences the good and bad consequences of his karma alone; and he goes alone to hell or the Supreme abode.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

No one is laughable who laughs at himself.

How can I be useful, of what service can I be? There is something inside me, what can it be?

I think we’ve taken the meaning of Christmas out. People don’t stop and think about Jesus or the birth of Jesus. When they think of Christmas, they think of Santa Claus and – for the children, and they think of giving gifts and out-giving the next person of spending their time looking for the right thing for somebody who has everything.

It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

We are all sentenced to solitary confinement inside our own skins, for life.

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

Reality is a sliding door.

Man is a universe within himself.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.

When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.

All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

Old age is just a record of one’s whole life.

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

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

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is, that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life, to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution – this everlasting living soul, began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

My ‚fear‘ is my substance, and probably the best part of me.

An artist or a creative person of any kind goes about their work because it’s their path, it’s what excites them, it’s what aligns their soul with who they truly are, who they showed up to be.

I have an obsession with knowing the answers to things. When I don’t know what happened, it just bothers me, gets under my skin, and I need to write about it.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

There may be a great fire in our hearts, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.

I am getting to the point where the only love worth being in is the love worth singing about.

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.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

It’s better to be unhappy alone than unhappy with someone – so far.

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

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.

The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account.

I still close my eyes and go home – I can always draw from that.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

I don’t know what ‚normal‘ means, anyway.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

I’m perpetually lonely.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

One word from the Lord is like a piece of gold to a believer, who is like a jeweler, shaping and hammering out the promise for a number of weeks.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

We are wiser than we know.

What a liberation to realize that the ‚voice in my head‘ is not who I am. ‚Who am I, then?‘ The one who sees that.

When I say ‚Crush your enemy‘, I don’t literally mean it.