“Literature can train, and exercise, our ability to weep for those who are not us or ours.”

Instead of just recording reality, photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality and of realism.

To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing – a hand worker in an era of mass production.

Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New Year’s prayer, not a resolution. I’m praying for courage.

If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.

Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager.

Societies need to have one illness which becomes identified with evil, and attaches blame to its victims.

Real art has the capacity to make us nervous.

My idea of a writer: someone interested in everything.

Shouting has never made me understand anything.

Fear of sexuality is the new, disease-sponsored register of the universe of fear in which everyone now lives.

I want to be able to be alone, to find it nourishing – not just a waiting.

I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.

A good book is an education of the heart. It enlarges your sense of human possibility what human nature is of what happens in the world. It’s a creator of inwardness.

Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it’s the secret to good sex.

Art is a form of consciousness.

One can never ask anyone to change a feeling.

I’d be more frightened by not using whatever abilities I’d been given. I’d be more frightened by procrastination and laziness.

People with no morals often considered themselves more free, but mostly they lacked the ability to feel or love.

A great hallmark of mental wellness is the ability to be in the present moment, fully and with no thoughts of being elsewhere.

Invest in your own abilities, beliefs, and actions; these are the things you have control over.

There’s something about beating another human into the ground who also has the ability to fight for his life and the opportunity to take yours. it makes you feel particularly great when you win.

Your opinion about yourself influences your ability to pay your bills.

Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.