World power means nothing. Only the unsayable, jeweled inner life matters.
The very impulse to write springs from an inner chaos crying for order - for meaning.
Love yourself. . . accept yourself. . . be yourself-these qualities will create for the first time an individual whose inner flame is undividable a great pool of energy will gather and surround you with this an inner trust will arise from within you.
The way to see what looks good and understand the reasons it looks good, and to be at one with this goodness as the work proceeds, is to cultivate an inner quietness, a peace of mind so that goodness can shine through.
Sometimes, keeping track of people. It's always a weird combination of worrying so much about the outside world, and not. . . you have to be more aware of the inner circle, the folks that matter.
Before entering the seminary, I had not encountered the life-changing potential of reading as a source of meaning, as a way of ordering one's inner life, and being rooted in the world.
Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think.
The greatest misfortune that can come to a human being is to lose his inner peace. No outer force can rob him of it. It is his own thoughts, his own actions, that rob him of it.
How my eyes see, perspective, is my key to enter into His gates. I can only do so with thanksgiving. If my inner eye has God seeping up through all things, then can't I give thanks for anything? And if I can give thanks for the good things, the hard things, the absolute everything, I can enter the gates to glory. Living in His presence is fullness of joy- and seeing shows the way in.
Inner life is Divine.
Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else.
By developing a sense of concern for others' well-being, then no matter what others' attitudes are, you can keep inner peace.
Find inner peace? I looked; it wasn't there.
What is needed is, in the end, simply this: solitude, great inner solitude.
The fearsome blessing of that hard time continues to work itself out in my life in the same way we're told the universe is still hurtling through outer space under the impact of the great cosmic explosion. . . . I think grace sometimes explodes into our lives like that-sending our pain, terror, astonishment hurtling through inner space until by grace they become Orion, Cassiopeia, Polaris to give us our bearings, to bring us into something like full being at last.
There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth.
Let your inner DORK shine through.
Hallucinations are an inner experience in which most of the time you forget you're there.
There are no choices that are really a detour that will take you far from where you're wanting to be - because your Inner Being is always guiding you to the next, and the next, and the next. So don't be concerned that you may make a fatal choice, because there aren't any of those. You are always finding your balance. It's a never ending process.
You really have to look inside yourself to find your inner strength.
