it is only by expressing all that is inside that purer and purer streams come. ... Pour out the dull things on paper too-you can tear them up afterward-for only then do the bright ones come. If you hold back the dull things, you are certain to hold back what is clear and beautiful and true and lively.

Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his *true* self and not from the self he thinks he *should* be.

The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny.

Creative listeners are those who want you to be recklessly yourself, even at your very worst, even vituperative, bad-tempered. They are laughing and just delighted with any manifestation of yourself, bad or good. For true listeners know that if you are bad-tempered it does not mean that you are always so. They don't love you just when you are nice; they love all of you.

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

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

And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective and learns more and does more good