Although the constant shadow of certain death looms over everyday, the pleasures and joys of life can be so fine and affecting that the heart is nearly stilled in astonishment.

Writing isn't a source of pain. It's psychic chemotherapy. It reduces your psychological tumors and relieves your pain.

I'm alive but I have no life. I'm alive but also dead. I'm dead and alive.

He said, if you allow yourself to be enchanted by the beauty to be seen in even ordinary things, then all things proved to be extraordinary.

Language can't describe reality. Literature has no stable reference, no real meaning. Each reader's interpretation is equally valid, more important than the author's intention. In fact, nothing in life has meaning. Reality is subjective. Values and truths are subjective. Life itself is a kind of illusion. Blah, blah, blah, let's have another scotch.

We yearn for tomorrow and the progress that it represents. But yesterday was once tomorrow, and where was progress in it? Or we yearn for yesterday, for what was or what might have been. But as we are yearning, the present is becoming the past, so the past is nothing but our yearning for second chances.

No degree of prosperity can be sufficient to eliminate all misfortune, and sloth is impervious to opportunity.