It is the same with anything - you have to learn through your own experience, paying your own way. You can't learn it from a book.

A certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.

Not just beautiful, though--the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.

Even castles in the sky can do with a fresh coat of paint.

Writing a long novel is like survival training. Physical strength is as necessary as artistic sensitivity.

My biggest fault is that the faults I was born with grow bigger each year.

Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.