“I have always tried to hide my efforts and wished my works to have a light joyousness of springtime which never lets anyone suspect the labors it has cost me.”

“Crying is right at hand in the smothering dark, closed inside someone else, when you see how everything you can ever accomplish will end up as trash.”

“It takes one eye opened to meet your true love, but both eyes closed to keep them.”

“Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny. And a time to prepare to pick up the pieces when it's all over.”

“A man who lives right, and is right, has more power in his silence than another has by his words.”

"Never take life too seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyways."

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”

“His heart, once capable of inspiring others so completely, could no longer inspire so much as itself. It beat now only out of habit. It beat now only because it could.”

"I've been living in bed because now you tell me to sleep. I've been hiding my face and my voice and you decide when I eat. In your dreams i'm a criminal, horrible, sleeping around. While you're awake i'm impossible, constantly letting you down."

"But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?"

"Sleep is good, death is better; but of course, the best thing would be to have never been born at all."

"The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized - never knowing."

“A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.”

“To fail is a natural consequence of trying, To succeed takes time and prolonged effort in the face of unfriendly odds. To think it will be any other way, no matter what you do, is to invite yourself to be hurt and to limit your enthusiasm for trying again.”

“Your weak point is the open, vulnerable place where you can always be hurt. Love, in all its aspects, opens the self so fully.”

“Most cynics are really crushed romantics: they've been hurt, they're sensitive, and their cynicism is a shell that's protecting this tiny, dear part in them that's still alive.”