You know, I have come to think listening is love, that's what it really is.

Sometimes I think of life as a process where everybody is discouraging and taking everybody else down a peg or two.

Writing is the action of thinking, just as drawing is the action of seeing and composing music is the action of hearing.

You have to hold your audience in writing to the very end-much more than in talking, when people have to be polite and listen to you.

Who are the people, for example, to whom you go for advice? Not to the hard, practical ones who can tell you exactly what to do, but to the listeners; that is, the kindest, least censorious, least bossy people you know. It is because by pouring out your problem to them, you then know what to do about it yourself.

I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.

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.