“That is why I write - to try to turn sadness into longing, solitude into remembrance.”

“But 'why then publish?' There are no rewardsOf fame or profit when the world grows weary.I ask in turn why do you play at cards?Why drink? Why read? To make some hour less dreary.It occupies me to turn back regardsOn what I've seen or pondered, sad or cheery,And what I write I cast upon the streamTo swim or sink. I have had at least my dream.”

“Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure - such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.”

“In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again.”

“Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me, I want people to know “why” I look this way. I’ve traveled a long way and some of the roads weren’t paved.”

“The solitude of writing is a solitude without which writing could not be produced, or would crumble, drained bloodless by the search for something else to write.”