“Life is agid. Life is fulgid. Life is a burgeoning, a quickening of the dim primordial urge in the murky wastes of time. Life is what the least of us make most of us feel the least of us make the most of.”

“The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.”

“If nothing saves us from death, at least love should save us from life”

“All that is good in civilization must be for the equal use of all, in order that each man may make his life most worthwhile to the common life and to himself.”

“Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.”

“Writing as a process of personal expression is an effort to provide meaning to life. Whether it is in the form of poetry which gives a touch of beauty to what we think or feel, or novels or stories as imaginative imitations of life. Whether it will succeed or fail, at least the writing will make us wiser in interpreting our own lives.”

“We all love best not those who offend us least, nor those who have done most for us, but those who make it most easy for us to forgive them.”

“MISPENDING a Man's time is a kind of self-homicide, it is making Life to be of no use.”

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.”