One must learn to be silent just as one must learn to talk.

---

I am overwhelmed with things I ought to have written about and never found the proper words.

---

Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.

---

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

---

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

---

A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living.

---

I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.

---

Intimacy is a difficult art.

---

No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.

---

In life there are two things which are dependable. The pleasures of the flesh and the pleasures of literature. ― Sei Shōnagon

---