“If the bird does like its cage, and does like its sugar and will not leave it, why keep the door so carefully shut? Why not open it, only a little? Do they know there is many a bird will not break ...”

“My feeling is that there is nothing in life but refraining from hurting others, and comforting those who are sad.”

“I would like to say to the men and women of the generations which will come after us: you will look back at us with astonishment. You will wonder at passionate struggles that accomplished so little...”

“[O]nly the sea is like a human being . . .always moving, always something deep in itself is stirring it. It never rests; it is always wanting, wanting, wanting. It hurries on; and then it creeps ba...”

“No good work is ever done while the heart is hot and anxious and fretted.”

“Wisdom never kicks at the iron walls it can't bring down.”

“The best incentive for an artist are the harshest criticism”

“I have no idea how to be an artist and a lover, so I chose the one most likely to make me happy when I'm eighty and gazing back on a long and productive life.”

“Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice.”

“If you want to be a writer-stop talking about it and sit down and write!”

“You can write nothing of value unless you give yourself wholly to the the theme -- and when you so give yourself -- you lose appetite ans sleep -- it cannot be helped --”

“If you're a writer, the answer to everything is yes.”

“great writers are indecent peoplethey live unfairlysaving the best part for paper.good human beings save the worldso that bastards like me can keep creating art,become immortal.if you read this aft...”

“Some writers enjoy writing, I am told. Not me. I enjoy having written.”

“Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on ...”