“The joy I feel is immense; it burns inside me as though I have swallowed a piece of the sun.”

“Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

“I can't pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its jacket, or hand me over a promissory note of such immense power that it contains the formula that will change everything about me.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

“Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

“unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside.”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

“This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“Joy! Joy! I triumph! Now no more I know
Myself as simply me. I burn with love
Unto myself, and bury me in love.
The centre is within me and its wonder
Lies as a circle everywhere about me.
Joy! Joy! No mortal thought can fathom me.”

Attar of Nishapur (1145–1230) Persian Sufi poet

“Ten long trips around the sun since I last saw that smile, but only joy and thankfulness that on a tiny world in the vastness, for a couple of moments in the immensity of time, we were one.”

Ann Druyan (1949) American author and producer

“I have need of angels. Enough hell has swallowed me for too many years. But finally understand this--I have burned up one hundred thousand human lives already, from the strength of my pain.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director