When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.

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Injustice makes the rules, and courage breaks them.

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A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

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The creative adult is the child who has survived.

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People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.

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Change is freedom, change is life. It's always easier not to think for oneself. Find a nice safe hierarchy and settle in. Don't make changes, don't risk disapproval, don't upset your syndics. It's always easiest to let yourself be governed. There's a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities. Those who build walls are their own prisoners. I'm going to go fulfil my proper function in the social organism. I'm going to go unbuild walls.

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All of us have to learn how to invent our lives , make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don't, our lives get made up for us by other people .

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The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.

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To be oneself is a rare thing, and a great one.

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Elegance is a small price to pay for enlightenment, and I was glad to pay it.

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