“How can we manage to illuminate the pathos of our lives?”

Reality favors symmetry.

Writing is nothing more than a guided dream.

I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me.

Creativity is suspended between memory and forgetting.

I suppose identity depends on memory. And if my memory is blotted out, then I wonder if I exist – I mean, if I am the same person. Of course, I don’t have to solve that problem. It’s up to God, if any.

I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t expect to arrive.

Reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but hypotheses may not.

In adultery, there is usually tenderness and self-sacrifice; in murder, courage; in profanation and blasphemy, a certain satanic splendour. Judas elected those offences unvisited by any virtues: abuse of confidence and informing.

I am not sure of anything, I know nothing. Can you imagine that I don’t even know the date of my own death?

You may win your heart’s desire, but in the end you’re cheated of it by death.

To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.

When one confesses to an act, one ceases to be an actor in it and becomes its witness, becomes a man that observes and narrates it and no longer the man that performed it.

I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.

We are our memory, we are that chimerical museum of shifting shapes, that pile of broken mirrors.

May Heaven exist, even if my place is Hell.

Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.

History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.

Don’t hate the arising of thoughts or stop the thoughts that do arise. Simply realize that our original mind, right from the start, is beyond thought, so that no matter what, you never get involved with thoughts. Illuminate original mind, and no other understanding is necessary.

By persistent and sustained practice, anyone and everyone can make the yoga journey and reach the goal of illumination and freedom.

What are the sources of an illumination? To me, they come after hours of searching and keeping my soul ready. Yet they come in a flash, as a religious phenomenon.

The dimensions of a work of art are seldom realized by the author until the work is accomplished. It is like a flowering dream. Ideas grow, budding silently, and there are a thousand illuminations coming day by day as the work progresses.

For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and valor. Of the endless fluid passage of the humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who – one word- love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him, he felt a warning, a shaft of terror.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter had such an illumination, beginning my long search for the truth of the story and flashing light into the long two years ahead.

Statistics are used much like a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.