To the extent that I come from a deeply religious tradition and have been contending with those beginnings all of my life - that constitutes the subject of much of my early fiction.

I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.

Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.

Something that is yours forever is never precious

Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.

Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.

Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal' without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.

I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.

All beginnings are hard.

I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.

Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul

If you had started doing anything two weeks ago, by today you would have been two weeks better at it.

Do more than expected, promise less than you can keep.

As long as we dare dream, we can occupy new land.

I drift along, thinking about the past a great deal. The past is so reliable, so delightful, and the best place to live. I end up there quite often, you know; it's very comfortable and dependable.

There is a saying in Tibetan, 'Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.' No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that's our real disaster.

We need to go inward instead of outward, and learn to trust our own inner guide, preserving our identity and finding the answers from within.

Aviation is poetry ... It's the finest kind of moving around, you know, just as poetry is the finest way of using words.

The difficulty of course is that I like women. It is only wives I am in trouble with.

a kite is a victim you are sure of. you love it because it pulls.

Envy is a littleness of soul, which cannot see beyond a certain point, and if it does not occupy the whole space feels itself excluded.