Get the big truth first. If you get the big truth, the small truths will accumulate around it.

When rivers flooded, when fire fell from the sky, what a fine place the library was, the many rooms, the books. With luck, no one found you. How could they!--when you were off to Tanganyika in '98, Cairo in 1812, Florence in 1492!?

And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right.

Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me, I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read.

If you don't like what you're doing, then don't do it.

Don’t worry about things. Don’t push. Just do your work and you’ll survive. The important thing is to have a ball, to be joyful, to be loving and to be explosive. Out of that comes everything and you grow.

All of us, no matter how we look born into this world, feel something like the Hunchback. It doesn't matter if you have a beautiful face or not.