“I’d come to realize that all our troubles spring from our failure to use plain, clear-cut language.”

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are – that is the fact.

What is important is not what happens to us, but how we respond to what happens to us.

It is therefore senseless to think of complaining since nothing foreign has decided what we feel, what we live, or what we are.

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

Your judgement judges you and defines you.

Three o’clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

I wanted the moments of my life to follow and order themselves like those of a life remembered. You might as well try and catch time by the tail.

As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.

All men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

To think new thoughts you have to break the bones in your head.

Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being – like a worm.

I have no religion, but if I were to choose one, it would be that of Shariati’s.

What is there to fear in such a regular world?

People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends: is that why my flesh is so naked?

Many people fail in life, not for lack of ability or brains or even courage but simply because they have never organized their energies around a goal.

I chose life over death for myself and my friends. I believe it is in our nature to explore, to reach out into the unknown. The only true failure would be not to explore at all.

Failure — The man who can tell others what to do and how to do it, but never does it himself.

You have not failed until you quit trying.

In business, you take a swing and you hope that you hit a home run, but sometimes you strike out. Strikeouts and failures are important. Being down, getting punched in the gut every once in a while by life and coming back up, that’s accomplishment.

I want to risk hitting my head on the ceiling of my talent. I want to really test it out and say: O.K., you’re not that good. You just reached the level here. I don’t ever want to fail, but I want to risk failure every time out of the gate.

In nothing do we fail more, as a Mission, than in lack of tact and politeness.

Suffering, failure, loneliness, sorrow, discouragement, and death will be part of your journey, but the Kingdom of God will conquer all these horrors. No evil can resist grace forever.