“Never bear more than one trouble at a time. Some people bear three kinds-- all they have had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.”

“I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see. Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!”

“Why, alone of all the more-than-five-hundred-million, should I have to bear the burden of history?”

“There are some so restless that when they are free from labour they labour all the more, because the leisure they they have for thought, the worse interior turmoil they have to bear.”

“People have many cruel expectations from writers. People expect novelists to live on a hill with three kids and a spouse, people expect children's story writers to never have sex, and people expect all great poets to be dead. And these are all very difficult expectations to fulfill, I think.”

“Time and I have quarrelled. All hours are midnight now. I had a clock and a watch, but I destroyed them both. I could not bear the way they mocked me.”