“It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.”

“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.”

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”

“Dreams are necessary to life.”

“Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.”

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”

“People living deeply have no fear of death.”

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”