Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his *true* self and not from the self he thinks he *should* be.
…at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.
…the best way to know the Truth or Beauty is to try to express it. And what is the purpose of existence Here or Yonder but to discover truth and beauty and express it, i.e., share it with others?
Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.
The imagination needs moodling,–long, inefficient happy idling, dawdling and puttering.
Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.
Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.
Think of yourself as an incandescent power, illuminated and perhaps forever talked to by God and his messengers.
Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.
By encouraging the critic in themselves (the hater) they have killed the artist (the lover).
At least I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had. Not to preach to them, but to give it to them if they cared to hear it.
When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.
Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter,–making us think of funnier and funnier things.
In true courage there is always an element of choice of an ethical choice and of anguish and also of action and deed. There is always a flame of spirit in it a vision of some necessity higher than oneself.
We are always afraid to start something that we want to make very good true and serious.
It is only by expressing all that is inside that purer and purer streams come.
Orthodox criticism … is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented having the most imagination and sympathy these are the first ones to get killed off.
Inspiration does not come like a bolt nor is it kinetic energy striving but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time.
When we are listened to it creates us makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.
Everybody is talented original and has something important to say.
Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time you are incomparable.
This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.