To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.

Skill in writing frees you to write what you want to write. It may also show you what you want to write. Craft enables art.

Everything gives way before the recurring torment and festivity of passion.

The backside of heroism is often rather sad; women and servants know that. They know also that the heroism may be no less real for that. But achievement is smaller than men think. What is large is the sky, the earth, the sea, the soul.

Genre is a useful concept only when used not evaluatively but descriptively.

All knowledge is local, all truth is partial. No truth can make another truth untrue. All knowledge is part of the whole knowledge. Once you have seen the larger pattern, you cannot go back to seeing the part as the whole.

But need alone is not enough to set power free: there must be knowledge.