we like fixed rules because that ends thinking and we can rest. But there is no resting place down here.

No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good.

Write a true, careless, slovenly impulsive, honest diary every day of your life.

I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. When we really listen to people there is an alternating current, and this recharges us so that we never get tired of each other. We are constantly being re-created.

... the spirit, I think, is a stream, a fountain, and must be continually poured out, for only if it is poured out will more and clearer streams come.

If I did not wear torn pants, orthopedic shoes, frantic disheveled hair, that is to say, if I did not tone down my beauty, people would go mad. Married men would run amuck.