“The most important thing is insight, that is to be-curiosity-to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does, and if you have that, then I don’t think the talent makes much difference, whether you’ve got it or not.”

The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.

The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends.

No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.

If we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don’t deserve to survive, and probably won’t.

Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

The writer’s only responsibility is to his art.

Our most treasured family heirloom are our sweet family memories.

One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat…nor make love for eight hours…

A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune

But I will be damned if I propose to be at the beck and call of every itinerant scoundrel who has two cents to invest in a postage stamp. This, sir, is my resignation.

History is not was, it is.

I think now that the young man must possess or teach himself, training himself, in infinite patience, which is to try and to try until it comes right.

One should read them, listen to them, think about them, contemplate them, and investigate the present reality, the present experience with them. Then, and only then, can one insightfully know the truth beyond words.

Meditation is like a gym in which you develop the powerful mental muscles of calm and insight.

Meditation is like a single log of wood. Insight and investigation are one end of the log; calm and concentration are the other end. If you lift up the whole log, both sides come up at once. Which is concentration and which is insight? Just this mind.

I want to be violated by insight.

The Buddha’s insight into the middle way is not simply about a balance between extremes. This conventional understanding misses the deeper revelation of the middle way as being the very nature of unexcelled enlightenment.

Humor brings insight and tolerance.

Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.

Then comes the insight that All is God. One still realizes that the world is as it was, but it does not matter, it does not affect one’s faith.