Other people's stories may become part of your own, the foundation of it, the ground it goes on.

If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn't flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.

What you select from, in order to tell your story, is nothing less than everything. What you build up your world from, your local, intelligible rational, coherent world, is nothing less than everything. . . . . All human knowledge is local. Every life, each human life is local, is arbitrary, the infinitesimal momentary glitter of a reflection.

In the tale, in the telling, we are all one blood.

I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.

True understanding is the spur of genius

The use of imaginative fiction is to deepen your understanding of your world, and your fellow men, and your own feelings, and your destiny.