No one writes anything worth writing, unless he writes entirely for the sake of his subject.

Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts.

When you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it's a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect.

What now on the other hand makes people sociable is their incapacity to endure solitude and thus themselves.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

To be shocked at how deeply rejection hurts is to ignore what acceptance involves. We must never allow our suffering to be compounded by suggestions that there is something odd in suffering so deeply. There would be something amiss if we didn't.

It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can flourish.