“I would rather be ashes than dust.”

Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death.

I was five years old the first time I got drunk.

So that was the way. No fair play. Once down, that was the end of you.

You stand on dead men’s legs. You’ve never had any of your own. You couldn’t walk alone between two sunrises and hustle the meat for your belly.

Having no new companions, nothing remained for him but to read.

The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.

I’d rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.

The function of man is to live, not to exist.

If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.

Pursuit and possession are accompanied by states of consciousness so wide apart that they can never be united.

You look back and see how hard you worked and how poor you were, and how desperately anxious you were to succeed, and all you can remember is how happy you were.

She was thrilling to a desire that urged her to go forward, to be in closer to that fire, to be squabbling with the dogs, and to be avoiding and dodging the stumbling feet of men.

Affluence means influence.

The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

It is the woman who chooses the man who will choose her.

No healthy Christian ever chooses suffering; he chooses God’s will, as Jesus did, whether it means suffering or not.

Choose a good disagreeable friend, if you be wise–a surly, steady, economical, rigid fellow.

The soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay With courage to behold the restless day, And count it fair.

When you make a choice, you change the future.

Nothing shapes your life more than the commitments you choose to make.

If we want a new future that does not look like our past, we must make new choices in the present.

When I was around 18, I looked in the mirror and said, ‘You’re either going to love yourself or hate yourself.’ And I decided to love myself. That changed a lot of things.