Body odour (known also as scent of the immortals) is a disgusting condition with an awful, nauseating smell.

Dreams are more real than reality itself, they're closer to the self.

Writing eases my suffering . . . writing is my way of reaffirming my own existence.

Walk where your heart leads you, there are no restrictions and no burdens.

If you want to do anything, do it now, without compromise or concession, because you have only one life.

Observing humans and observing oneself yields a clear-minded starting point for literature.

Loneliness is a prerequisite for freedom. Freedom depends on the ability to reflect, and reflection can only begin when one is alone.

It's in literature that true life can be found. It's under the mask of fiction that you can tell the truth.

Love is so holy, so confusing. It makes a man anxious, tormented. Love, how can I define it?

I don't want to be a strong hero who can save society. I just want to save myself.

For me, writing [was] a question of survival...I could not trust anyone, even my family. The atmosphere was so poisoned. People even in your own family could turn you in.

No matter where we live on the planet or how difficult our situation seems to be, we have the ability to overcome and transcend our circumstances.

Perfectionists are not all negative, miserable, unhappy and over controlling individuals

Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you're any wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar.

If you make a decision, a pact with someone, your friend, you should say, 'I'm gonna do this,' and you should stick to it.

I would not be cured if the price of the cure was that I must leave the island and give up my work I am perfectly resigned to my lot. Do not feel sorry for me.

Salvation is a work of God for man, rather than a work of man for God.

I really hate to see abusive behavior being passed on from generation to generation to generation, when we have access to health and counseling.

I love Australia passionately. I love our landscape. It's influenced most of my work, really. Almost everything I've written is about the landscape. Trying to find, the sacred, the spiritual in it.

Don’t waste talent. No matter what you do, don’t waste talent.

I had been working purely abstractly for so long, it was important for me to see whether I was working abstractly because I couldn't work any other way, or whether I was doing it out of choice.