“the correct statement would be, not that I disliked poetry, but that I was theoretically indifferent to it. I disliked any sentiments in poetry which I should have disliked in prose; and that included a great deal. And I was wholly blind to its place in human culture, as a means of educating the feelings. But I was always personally very susceptible to some kinds of it.
Long before I had enlarged in any considerable degree, the basis of my intellectual creed, I had obtained in the natural course of my mental progress, poetic culture of the most valuable kind, by means of reverential admiration for the lives and characters of heroic persons; especially the heroes of philosophy.

Condorcet's Life of Turgot; a book well calculated to rouse the best sort of enthusiasm, since it contains one of the wisest and noblest of lives, delineated by one of the wisest and noblest of men.”

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

in his letter, 15 February 1889, (L. 911); as cited in Steven Z. Levine, ‎Claude Monet (1994), Monet, Narcissus, and Self-Reflection: The Modernist Myth of the Self. p. 93
1870 - 1890

Source: The Name of the Wind (2007), Chapter 14, “The Name of the Wind” (p. 112)

Other quotes, 2014
Original: (ja) 逆境は嫌いじゃないので。弱くなってる自分がすごく嫌なんです。それは本当に嫌いですけど、でも弱いというのは強くなれる可能性があると思ってるんで。
Source: Excerpt from a press conference at the NHK Trophy 2014, held on 30 November 2014, aired the same day in ネオスポ (Neospo) on TV Tokyo and 15 December 2014 in News Every on NTV.

Sail 25 (p. 75)
Short fiction, Future Tense (1964)

E.W. Howe's Monthly January, 1912.

Forward (April 2011)
God Is Not a Christian: And Other Provocations (2011)
Context: Some of my friends are skeptical when they hear me say this, but I am by nature a person who dislikes confrontation. I have consciously sought during my lifetime to emulate my mother, whom our family knew as a gentle “comforter of the afflicted.” However, when I see innocent people suffering, pushed around by the rich and the powerful, then, as the prophet Jeremiah, says, if I try to keep quiet is is as if the word of God burned like a fire in my breast. I feel compelled to speak out, sometimes to even argue with God over how a loving creator can allow this to happen.
In the Church of Sant'Egido in Rome, home of an extraordinary community of lay people devoted to working with the poor, there is an old crucifix that portrays Christ without arms. When I asked about its importance to the community, I was told that it shows how God relies on us to do God's work in the world.
Without us, God has no eyes, without us, God has no ears; without us, God has no arms or hands. God relies on us. Won't you join other people of faith in becoming God's partners in the world?

Poetry
Collected Poems (1951)