I Can Pray Better When I'm Comfortable.

Life Comes First, An Art Not Rooted In Human Experience Is Not Worth A Damn, But Different Kinds Of Minds Have Different Kinds Of Experience, And All I Ask Of Any Man Is Validity; And There Should Be Place For Every Type And Kind Of Mind.

I Have No Patience With This Dreadful Idea That Whatever You Have In You Has To Come Out, That You Can't Suppress True Talent. People Can Be Destroyed; They Can Be Bent, Distorted, And Completely Crippled. In Spite Of All The Poetry, All The Philosophy To The Contrary, We Are Not Really Masters Of Our Fate.

Untrained Minds Have Always Been A Nuisance To The Military Police Of Orthodoxy. God-intoxicated Mystics And Untidy Saints With Only A White Blaze Of Divine Love Where Their Minds Should Have Been, Are Perpetually Creating Almost As Much Disorder Within The Law As Outside It.

Perhaps The Habit Which Distinguishes Civilized People From Others Is That Of Discussion, Exchange Of Opinion And Ideas, The Ability To Differ Without Quarrelling, To Say What You Have To Say Civilly And Then To Listen Civilly To Another Speaker.

I Started Out With Nothing In The World But A Kind Of Passion, A Driving Desire. I Don't Know Where It Came From, And I Don't Know Why - Or Why I Have Been So Stubborn About It That Nothing Could Deflect Me. But This Thing Between Me And My Writing Is The Strongest Bond I Have Ever Had - Stronger Than Any Bond Or Any Engagement With Any Human Being Or With Any Other Work I've Ever Done.