It is so conceited and timid to be ashamed of one’s mistakes. Of course they are mistakes. Go on to the next.

Well, van Gogh was one of the great painters. During his life he made only 109 dollars in all on his paintings. They are now worth about two million dollars. He had a terribly hard life – loneliness, poverty, and starvation that led to insanity. And yet it was one of the greatest lives that was ever lived – the happiest, the most burningly incandescent.

The only way to find your true self is by recklessness and freedom.

And the true listener is much more beloved, magnetic than the talker, and he is more effective and learns more and does more good.

You can write anything you want to, – a six-act blank verse, symbolic tragedy or a vulgar short, short story. Just so that you write it with honesty and gusto, and do not try to make somebody believe that you are smarter than you are. What’s the use? You can never be smarter than you are.

The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny.

You know, I have come to think listening is love, that’s what it really is.

Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter, – making us think of funnier and funnier things.

You do not know what is in you – an inexhaustible fountain of ideas.

If you are never satisfied with what you write, that is a good sign. It means that your vision can see so far that it’s hard to come up to it. Again I say – the only unfortunate people are the glib ones, immediately satisfied with their work. To them, the ocean is only knee-deep.