Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover seeds of truth.

Few people ask from books what books can give us. Most commonly we come to books with blurred and divided minds, asking of fiction that it shall be true, of poetry that it shall be false, of biography that it shall be flattering, of history that it shall enforce our own prejudices. If we could banish all such preconceptions when we read, that would be an admirable beginning.

Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living?

But beauty must be broken daily to remain beautiful.

I'm terrified of passive acquiescence. I live in intensity.

Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.

Now the writer, I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of ... reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us.