I felt the exultancy of a man just released from slavery and ready to set the universe on fire.

Most books, like their authors, are born to die; of only a few books can it be said that death has no dominion over them; they live, and their influence lives forever.

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.

It's fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats as I am most of the time — for jittery people.

I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell.

Mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from natural experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain.

The writer's duty is to keep on writing.

Reading - the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.

The pain is unrelenting; one does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.

It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it.

We should not write so that it is possible for the reader to understand us, but so that it is impossible for him to misunderstand us.

Grace is sufficient even though we huff and puff with all our might to try and find something or someone that it cannot cover. Grace is enough...

Touch is the magic wand of intimacy. Love is keeping in touch.

I like fashion. I like being in shape. I like to look nice and I like to make money, but I don't think that's the most, No. 1, important thing.

Zen is meditation, the actual experience of life directly, immediately with no buffers.

Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world.

It's not brave to do something that doesn't scare you.

If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinion for or against.

Pain is inevitable, but misery is optional. We cannot avoid pain, but we can avoid joy.