Optimism is a perfectly legitimate response to failure.

Art is a language which anneals individuals to each other through experiences that are uniquely human.

My only advice is to stay aware, listen carefully, and yell for help if you need it.

I can't give you a recipe for success, but I can give you a recipe for failure: try to please everybody.

The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

It isn't just talent. You have to have something else. You have to have a kind of nerve.

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.

Don't allow your rituals to become ruts.

It isn't a sadness, but a joy, that we don't do the same things for the length of our lives.

Fear has a very concrete power of keeping us from doing and saying the things that are our purpose.