“I’d sooner be smashed into a mangled pulp by a bus when we cross the street than look forward to a life like yours.”

Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.

The most valuable thing I have learned from life is to regret nothing.

As the cosmos are in place, so be it with your life.

We know our friends by their defects rather than by their merits.

I wish I could make you see how much fuller the life I offer you is than anything you have a conception of.

For my part I cannot believe in a God who is angry with me because I do not believe in him. I cannot believe in a God who is less tolerant than I. I cannot believe in a God who has neither humour nor common sense.

Don’t wait for experience to come to you; go out after experience. Experience is your material.

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.

Life isn’t long enough for love and art.

I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead.

We do not write because we want to; we write because we have to.

I always find it more difficult to say the things I mean than the things I don’t.

You demand unselfishness from others, which is a preposterous claim that they should sacrifice their desires to yours. Why should they?

Love is what happens to men and women who don’t know each other.

When you are reconciled to the fact that each is for himself in the world you will ask less from your fellows. They will not disappoint you, and you will look upon them more charitably.

If nobody spoke unless he had something to say, the human race would very soon lose the use of speech.

In life you are either growing or rotting. You’re moving forward or backwards; there is no standing still.

The Dharma Path is to keep walking forward. But the true Dharma has no going forward, no going backward, and no standing still.

Always look ahead, but never look back.

The motivation is really to say people can find the game of getting involved interesting and find the problem and really have the passion and the enthusiasm to solve it and move forward, but that’s all I know.

Self-censorship is insulting to the self. Timidity is a hopeless way forward.

Look at life all around; everything is growing, everything is moving forward. Therefore I recommend keeping in touch with life and with art.

Withdraws and makes itself up again pulls itself together with pride towers with pride rushes forward into imaginary conquest crashes in frustration withdraws with remorse and repentance pulls itself together with new resolution

Three simple rules in life: If you do not go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you do not ask, the answer will always be no. If you do not step forward, you will always be in the same place.