“Goodness begins simply with the fact of life itself.”

What, what am I to do with all of this life?

Exhaust the little moment soon it dies.

As you get older, you find that often the wheat, disentangling itself from the chaff, comes out to meet you.

Life must be aromatic. There must be scent, somehow there must be some.

I don’t like the idea of the black race being diluted out of existence. I like the idea of all of us being here.

Each body has its art.

With melted opals for my milk, Pearl-leaf for my cracker.

A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.

I am a writer perhaps because I am not a talker.

Do not be afraid of no, Who has so far, so very far to go.

Already I am no longer looked at with lechery or love.

One reason cats are happier than people is that they have no newspapers.

Poetry is life distilled.

Reading is important – read between the lines. Don’t swallow everything.

Art hurts. Art urges voyages – and it is easier to stay at home.

I think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master. No.

In all matters, before beginning, a diligent preparation should be made.

Perhaps their attacks on my character meant that the hour was ripe for my career to begin in earnest.

But what is great can only begin great.

Revolutions are the only political events which confront us directly and inevitably with the problem of beginning.

But I must at the very beginning lay down this principle – friendship can only exist between good men.

The two limits of every unit of thinking are a perplexed, troubled, or confused situation at the beginning, and a cleared up, unified, resolved situation at the close.

Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.

It’s only after you’ve stepped outside your comfort zone that you begin to change, grow, and transform.