“No work is so important you have to do it.”

“My feeling about work is that it's an unnecessary evil, so I've always done my best to avoid it.”

“To avoid starvation is the only excuse for working.”

“If your work is stressful, it's not your work.”

“The spiritual life to me has always meant just one thing: feeling.”

“I don't want to be the one who says life is beautiful. I want to be the one who feels it.”

“There are two types of seeds in the mind: those that create anger, fear, frustration, jealousy, hatred and those that create love, compassion, equanimity and joy. Spirituality is germination and sp...”

“My music teacher offered twittering madrigals and something about how, in Italy, in Italy, the oranges hang on the tree. He treated me - the humiliation of it - as a soprano.These, by contrast, are...”

“If you spend your time hoping someone will suffer the consequences for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.”

“Then Night came down like the feathery soot of a smoky lamp, and smutted[9] first the bedquilt, then the hearth-rug, then the window-seat, and then at last the great, stormy, faraway outside world....”

“Insomnia is the act of pushing through sleep to achieve the art of insane creativity.”

“I didn't sleep all night, thinking. I thought about you, about those puppy eyes you give me, when you fake your sadness to make me smile-- and that upper lip of yours that brings life to all of my ...”

“Man's greatest wisdom is to choose his obsession well.”

“Extinguish my eyes, I'll go on seeing you.Seal my ears, I'll go on hearing you.And without feet I can make my way to you,without a mouth I can swear your name.Break off my arms, I'll take hold of y...”

“All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and eac...”