If you write something and they all tell you it is bad - editors, critics, everybody - think it over and you may become convinced that they are right (though you are not to be ashamed or discouraged for a minute, but keep on writing).

Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.

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

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.

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.

We should all know this: that listening, not talking, is the gifted and great role, and the imaginative role.

When you will, make a resolution, set your jaw, you are expressing an imaginative fear that you won't do the thing. If you knew you would do the thing, you would smile happily and set about it. And this fear (since the imagination is always creative) comes about presently and you slide down into the complete slump of several weeks or years - the very thing you dreaded and set your jaw against.