“... misfortune and creativity go together.”

“Language, because it is imperfect, cannot encompass experience in its raw and primal condition. To verbalize emotion and action is to decrease their impact.”

“Because life, as Pablo Picasso averred, 'is a very bad novel', it has to be reworked through the writers' suffering into something much more meaningful, much more valuable. A life lived and relived, then, emitting intensity and beauty only achievable by a journey through pain.”

“... since the history of words is a mainspring of our intellectual and emotional character.”

“... misfortune and creativity go together.”