You shouldn't side-step suffering if you have to go through it to get where you're going.

Trust your happiness and the richness of your life at this moment. It is as true and as much yours as anything else that ever happened to you.

It is such a relief to be told the truth.

Be respectful of words. They mean something.

Life comes first, an art not rooted in human experience is not worth a damn, but different kinds of minds have different kinds of experience, and all I ask of any man is validity; and there should be place for every type and kind of mind.

Even St. Teresa said, "I can pray better when I'm comfortable," and she refused to wear her haircloth shirt or starve herself. I don't think living in cellars and starving is better for an artist than it is for anybody else.

I want to live in a world capital or the howling wilderness.