“Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.”

“Had my life increased, or merely added to itself? There had been addition and subtraction in my life, but how much multiplication?”

“It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.”

“I painted the lines and colours that affected my inner eye. I painted from memory without adding anything, without the details that I no longer saw in front of me. This is the reason for the simplicity of the painting, their obvious emptiness. I painted the impressions of my childhood, the dull colours of a forgotten day.”

“When something or someone is no longer bringing you up, but pulling you down—it’s time to let go. When something or someone is no longer adding to your life, but subtracting from it—it’s time to let go.”

“We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world.”