Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?
I had my bully, and it was excruciating. Not only the bully, but the intimidation I felt.
It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.
The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon. You can always do it better, find the exact word, the apt phrase, the leaping simile.
I'm always telling myself as I write that I'm not really writing a novel; I'm just going to fool around with a character or an idea.
Writing, even though it's hard work, is really a joy when you get these characters to come alive. It's hard to trace where they come from. I can't say that I am sitting here one night at nine o'clock and that a character occurs to me. The magic for me happens at the typewriter.
Jews know the Palestinians. And they know they're not really different. And they know they are from the same background. And they know if they coordinated that they could be an economic success and a real basis for a rebirth in the Middle East.
Where something becomes extremely difficult and unbearable, there we also stand already quite near its transformation.
Work, my children, work with your whole heart and soul! That is the thing. Mind not the fruit of work. What if you go to hell working for others? That is worth more than to gain heaven by seeking your own salvation. . . Sri Ramakrishna came and gave his life for the world. I will also sacrifice my life.
He who falls in love in bars doesn't need a woman all his own. He can always find one on loan.