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.

If only I had a wife!" I used to think, "who could stay home and keep the children happy, why I could support six of them. A cinch.

...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.

When we commit ourselves to writing for some part of each day, we are happier, more enlightened, alive, light-hearted and generous to everyone else. Even our health improves.

The true self is always in motion like music, a river of life, changing, moving, failing, suffering, learning, shining. That is why you must freely and recklessly make new mistakes - in writing or in life - and do not fret about them but pass on and write more.

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.

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.