To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

In every case the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers.

If mythic violence is lawmaking, divine violence is law-​destroying; if the former sets boundaries, the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythic violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood

The power of a text when it is read is different from the power it has when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.

Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas.

Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written.

The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing.