Just as in you are what you eat, it is even more precise to say you are what you say, what you read, and what you write.

Language is the beginning and the end of what makes us human. The language we do remains alive way after we depart this world. Language is in our mothers’ first lullaby, the first time we tell someone ‘I love you’, and we often talk about the significance of someone’s last words before they died.

I do not even agree with classifying writing as 'classic' or 'contemporary'. Great writing is contemporary regardless of when it was written. It is always timely. It communicates with readers across time and space. A great piece of writing is contemporary whether written yesterday or ten centuries ago.

I often struggle with every word I try to put on paper: there is always a voice within me screaming, ‘It is all useless! The world has gone totally deaf and blind!’But then another voice comes: ‘Sitting in a dark corner and closing your door and windows is also useless!’ And so, until the world decides to open its ears and its eyes, do I have any choice but to bleed on the endless snows of my blank pages?

I am writing to say something, but not because I was asked to, but because I really have something to say…I only say something when my words, like ripe fruit, can no longer hold onto the branch and must confront the hard and unforgiving ground they are about to encounter.

My eyes suddenly caught a vandalized sign on a door in a tight corner near Thrasyllou Street, which seemed like an intelligent twist of Charles Bukowski’s famous line “find what you love and let it kill you.” The line on the vandalized sign reversed this to make the meaning even more intense: “find out what kills you and love it!

It is not the quantity of publications, but their quality and the effects they have on the real world outside of academia’s ivory tower is what determines whether we shall live way after we exit this world, or perish while still at 30!