One knew in advance that life in New York would not be easy‚ but there were cheap rents in cold-water lofts without heat‚ and the excitement of being here made up for those hardships. I didn't move to New York to make a fortune.
God: personified incomprehensibility.
Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.
When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.
It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: if we sought a universal measure the strange and miraculous would not occur and all things would be equal.
To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.
Nothing puts a greater obstacle in the way of the progress of knowledge than thinking that one knows what one does not yet know.
These stories are ghosts, bringing people back from the dead. Just for a moment. For a visit. Every story is a ghost.
Simplicity is the heart of everything. If you look to the desert, apparently the desert is very simple but it's full of life, it's full of hidden places and the beauty is that it looks simple but it's complex in the way that it expresses the soul of the world or God.
A sail boat that sails backwards can never see the sun rise.
And ar'n't I a woman?