One never knows, one just endures, keeps the faith, burrows through the muck and tries to appreciate every sunset. And, if one must, one writes.

About the only way we know whether we believe or not is by what we do.

Like Greene or any other writer, when I write I do what I have to with what I can.

You may write for the joy of it, but the act of writing is not complete in itself. It has its end in its audience. Writing is a good example of self-abandonment. I never completely forget myself except when I am writing and I am never more completely myself than when I am writing.

It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth.

But the writer doesn't have to understand, only produce. And what makes him produce is not having the experience but contemplating the experience, and contemplating it doesn't mean understanding it so much as understanding he doesn't understand it.

Whatever you do anyway, remember that these things are mysteries and that if they were such that we could understand them, they wouldn't be worth understanding.

And only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live in every experience, painful or joyous; to live in gratitude for every moment, to live abundantly.

Lose this day loitering, 'twill be the same story Tomorrow, and the rest more dilatory; Thus, indecision brings its own delays And days are lost lamenting over days, Are you in earnest? Seize this very moment; What you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Courage has genius, power and magic in it; Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin it and the work will be completed.

One ought, everyday at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.