When I teach people, I marry them.

You must be true to yourself. Strong enough to be true to yourself. Brave enough to be strong enough to be true to yourself. Wise enough to be brave enough to be strong enough to shape yourself from what you actually are.

No other job in the world could possibly dispossess one so completely as this job of teaching. You could stand all day in a laundry, for instance, still in possession of your mind. But this teaching utterly obliterates you. It cuts right into your being: essentially, it takes over your spirit. It drags it out from where it would hide.

I am my own Universe, I my own Professor.

To feel as well as hear what someone says requires whole attention.

Not just part of us becomes a teacher. It engages the whole self - the woman or man, wife or husband, mother or father, the lover, scholar or artist in you as well as the teacher earning money.

There's no such thing beneath the heavens as conditions favorable to art. Art must crash through or perish.