I want people to enjoy the simplicity in the natural.
Friendship based solely upon gratitude is like a photograph; with time it fades.
Never can a room look comfortable without books. . . Books ought to be scattered all over the house, even in the passages, in the bedroom, les livres du chevet, everywhere.
My greatest wish is to write in such a manner that all may think they have written it themselves.
Those who look for reasons to hate miss opportunities to love.
One doesn't know one's self what grain one sows, that works on and on, through one and through many lives, transmitted from heart to heart and from lips to lips.
[Written in 1901:] Nothing has been so deplorable for countries as centralization. I am afraid when I see Germany grow so powerful, and centralizing in Berlin; it is the beginning of the end!
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems; And e'en the dearest--that I love the best-- Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.
The world you see is just a movie in your mind. Rocks dont see it. Bless and sit down. Forgive and forget. Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now. That’s the story. That’s the message. Nobody understands it, nobody listens, they’re all running around like chickens with heads cut off. I will try to teach it but it will be in vain, s’why I’ll end up in a shack praying and being cool and singing by my woodstove making pancakes.
Writing a novel is not so much a project as a journey, a voyage, an adventure.
Enough with the slaughters. Enough with the violence. Enough with the hatred in Iraq!