There is one thing we can do, and the happiest of people are those who do it to the limit of their ability. We can be completely present.

Wisdom before experience is only words; wisdom after experience is of no avail.

To be what no one ever was, to be what everyone has been: Freedom is the mean of those extremes that fence all effort in.

It’s a curious thing. I suppose most people think of artists as impatient but I don’t know of any first-rate artist who hasn’t manifested in his career an appalling patience, a willingness to wait and to do his best now in the expectation that next year he will do better.

Nothing in man is more serious than his sense of humor; it is the sign that he wants all the truth.

I love the fall. I love it because of the smells that you speak of; and also because things are dying, things that you don't have to take care of anymore, and the grass stops growing.

When it aims to express a love of the world it refuses to conceal the many reasons why the world is hard to love, though we must love it because we have no other, and to fail to love it is not to exist at all.