When men ask me how I know so much about men, they get a simple answer: everything I know about men, I learned from me.

A man who cannot control his temper is not very likely to control his passions, and no matter what his pretensions in religion, he moves in daily life very close to the animal plane.

You have to look at yourself objectively. Analyze yourself like an instrument. You have to be absolutely frank with yourself. Face your handicaps, don't try to hide them. Instead, develop something else.

Writer's block is a natural affliction. Writers who have never experienced it have something wrong with them. It means there isn't enough friction-that they aren't making enough of an effort to reconcile the contradictions of life. All you get is sweet monotonous flow. Writer's block is nothing to commit suicide over. It simply indicates some imbalance between your experience and your art, and I think that's constructive.

You don't meditate once and suddenly your life turns around. What it does is it lets you train your brain to be able to become more stable in an action-oriented way.

I only seek in my old age to perfect that which I had not before thoroughly learned in my youth, because my sins were a hindrance to me.