Then the writing became so fluid that I sometimes felt as if I were writing for the sheer pleasure of telling a story, which may be the human condition that most resembles levitation.
Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
Not a single man on earth knows from his own experience the how and where of his birth, only from tradition, which is often very uncertain.
I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – an integral function of the universe.
The afternoon of a human life must have a significance of its own, and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning.
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.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know
Lives are snowflakes - unique in detail, forming patterns we have seen before, but as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection.)
You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who ever had been alive. Only if we face these open wounds in ourselves can we understand them in other people.
Being a writer is an endless study in human transition and lessons learned or forgotten or misapplied.
Without music, life would be a mistake.
That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.
The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.
Peter Parker is probably the most relatable superhero - maybe ever - because he goes through something that basically everyone has to go through. Whether it's puberty or talking to girls or doing homework, he does it in such a human way. That's why he's such a beloved character: because so many people can relate to him.
Art is the nearest thing to life; it is a mode of amplifying experience and extending our contact with our fellow men beyond the bounds of our personal lot.
Pure unadulterated success is not as funny as failure.
Pain is the great teacher of mankind. Beneath its breath souls develop.
I still feel like when I walk on the set, I'm starting from scratch, until I realize, 'OK, I do know what I'm doing. I'm human.'
The idea of suicide, understandable as it is, does not seem commendable to me. We live in order to gain the greatest possible amount of spiritual development and self-awareness. As long as life is possible, even if only in a minimal degree, you should hang onto it, in order to scoop it up for the purpose of conscious development. To interrupt life before its time is to bring to a standstill an experiment which we have not set up. We have found ourselves in the midst of it and must carry it through to the end.
Sometimes, pain is all that lets you know you're alive.
To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it's hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.
Art consists in making others feel what we feel.
I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems... It's got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.
There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate - the genetic and neural fate - of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death.
After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.
