“When I write these notes, it is not to describe my own life. I am writing a study of the soul as I observe myself closely and use myself as an anatomical testing-ground. It would therefore be wrong to look on these notes as confessions. I have chosen – in accordance with Søren Kierkegaard – to split the work into two parts; the painter and his distraught friend the poet. Just as Leonarda da Vinci studied the recesses of the body and dissected human cadavers, I try from self-scrutiny to dissect what is the universal in the soul”

“To make myself visible as I am now, when I sense that the cadaver that I occupy is almost worn out or that the organs are no longer working very well, I breathe myself into a young body that has just died.”

“In order to test Hanuman's devotion, Rama once asked him, "How do you think of me?" Hanuman replied: "Lord, while I identify myself with the body, I am Thy servant. When I consider myself as an individual soul, I am a part of Thee. And when I look upon myself as the Atman, I am one with Thee—this is my firm conviction."”

“I am writing My Life to laugh at myself, and I am succeeding.”

“Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.”

“I have a paper cut from writing my suicide note. [sighs] It's a start…”

“When I still find some parts of my body that I have not found before, I tell myself, yes I am progressing scientifically… I don't stretch my body as if it is an object. I do yoga from the self towards the body, not the other way around.”

“I could only see myself making a living through writing, as I had done in China. But should I write in Chinese here, a foreign land, or enrol in a language class and study English grammar? If I continued to write in Chinese I would have no readers here. Besides, I would never create a community of fellow artists and thinkers in my Western life while speaking Chinese.”

“I have attempted to write the following account of myself, as if I were a dead man in another world looking back at my own life. Nor have I found this difficult, for life is nearly over with me. I have taken no pains about my style of writing.”

“I cannot write to anyone outside myself--if I tried, it would be a horrible story, flat and lifeless. I write to myself. That's the only person I'm trying to please.”