The point is not to pay back kindness but to pass it on.
Literature is about being a complex, contradictory human being.
Don't plan it all. Let life surprise you a little.
Terrence, the Roman slave who freed himself with his writings, once observed, "I am a human being. Nothing human is alien to me." That could be the motto of literature!
There is no end to what can be said about the world
How we lie to ourselves when we've fallen in love with the wrong man.