Renee S

“My own belief is that one regards oneself, if one is a serious writer, as an instrument for experiencing. Life—all of it-flows through this instrument and is distilled through it into works of art. How one lives as a private person is intimately bound into the work. And at some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth. If we are to understand the human condition, and if we are to accept ourselves in all the complexity, self-doubt, extravagance of feeling, guilt, joy, the slow freeing of the self to its full capacity for action and creation, both as human being and as artist, we have to know all we can about each other, and we have to be willing to go naked.”
― May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

“A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.”
― Franz Kafka

“Gratitude is the ability to experience life as a gift. It liberates us from the prison of self-preoccupation.”
― John Ortberg, When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.”
― Franz Kafka