The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.

目的可以证明手段的正当性，只要存在某种能证明目的正当性的东西。

不要害怕冒险。最大的回报往往来自于最大的风险。

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

The nightmare thought is that frightening people is the best way to get work out of them, and that somehow the crueler the environment, the more people will rise to the challenge. You want to think, who would you like as your ideal dad? And your ideal dad is somebody who is tough but gentle. And it's a very hard line to make. We need fathers, as it were, the exemplary father figures in society, avoiding the two extremes, which is the authoritarian disciplinarian on the one hand, and on the other, the lax, no-rules option.

In productive thinking, the transition from blind manipulation to understanding is crucial.