I know that we live after death and again and again, not in the memory of our children, or as a mulch for trees and flowers, however poetic that may be, but looking passionately and egocentrically out of our eyes.

If we don't act at all (express our imaginings either in work or a changing personality, so that we can learn and think again something better) we certainly rot.

it is when you are really living in the present-working, thinking, lost, absorbed in something you care about very much, that you are living spiritually.

Even if I knew for certain that I would never have anything published again, and would never make another cent from it, I would still keep on writing.

Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter,--making us think of funnier and funnier things.

Know that it is good to work. Work with love, and think of liking it when you do it. It is easy and interesting. It is a privilege. There is nothing hard about it but your anxious vanity and fear of failure.

The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing.