I cannot truly imagine a truly great person who hasn't suffered.

The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he's in prison.

Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.

If you wish to glimpse inside a human soul and get to know a man ... just watch him laugh. If he laughs well, he's a good man.

Learning to love is hard and we pay dearly for it. It takes hard work and a long apprenticeship, for it is not just for a moment that we must learn to love, but forever.

People speak sometimes about the "bestial" cruelty of man, but that is terribly unjust and offensive to beasts, no animal could ever be so cruel as a man, so artfully, so artistically cruel.

It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.

Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him.

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

Don’t be overwise; fling yourself straight into life, without deliberation; don’t be afraid - the flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again.

The most offensive is not their lying - one can always forgive lying - lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth - what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying.

to have great pain is to have certainty

When a storm of devastation approaches you from all directions it readily knows your unlimited potential of fighting back.

Because it's there.

Driving a race car is like dancing with a chain saw.

Writing poetry is a process of discovery...you can smell the poem before you see it....Like some animal.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

I've been around doing a little of this and a little of that.

If you're passionate about something, you believe in it, then you have to be consistent. And you have to put in the hard work that it takes to be successful.

Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

I was in the back of the book [in the The Reporter] doing music.