Quotes About Experience

I travelled among unknown men in lands beyond the sea . . .

The man who comes to writing late, but is in essence a writer, may sometimes gain as much as he has lost: his experience of life has given him a subject, he is spared the youthful writer's self-torment and soul-searching.

The failures and successes are necessary for learning.

The best musicians know this music isn't about "schools" at all. Like my father says, "There's only one school, the school of 'Can you play?

It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, "What should I write at the age of sixty-four," but never, "What should I write in 1940."

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

I don't think the mystical experience can be verbalized. When the ego disappears, so does power over language.

To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.

You trust them (white Americans), and I don't. You studied what he wanted you to learn about him in schools. I studied him in the streets and in prison, where you see the truth.

To leap over the wall of self, to look through another's eyes--this is valuable experience, which literature offers.

Mi biblioteca, ya que es preciso decíroslo, se compone de novelas... sí, de novelas... y de algunos poetas escogidos. Como si no tuviese bastante con mis propios males, comparto aún voluntariamente los de mil personajes imaginarios, y los siento tan vivamente como los míos.

Y ese es mi gran problema, paso mucho más tiempo imaginando las cosas que viviéndolas.

When I left my village, it was like I took a step with my right foot and, by the time my left foot came to join it, four years had passed.

bu wen bu rou wen zi, wen zi bu ruo jian zhi. jian zhi bu ruo zhi zi, zhi zi bu ruo xing zi. Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. But involve me, I will understand. XUN ZI (PHILOSOPHER, WARRING STATES PERIOD, 475–221 BC)

Once love is brought down to earth, and weighed, it's over, it's dead. – But don't you agree that real love is the love that's brought down to earth? It's only real when it's mixed up with dirt and sweat. Otherwise, it's just for puppies and adolescents!

At least you're still learning a lot. Even if everything is broken.

The road home is a long one. As I walk this road, I recall my grandmother's words: "Everyone has a past life, a future life and a present life.

Dreams are more real than reality itself, they're closer to the self.

Everybody can write poetry, just like everybody knows how to make love.

The way we understand both our present and our future depends on what we have lived through.

Just as books are read one word at a time, roads are taken one step at a time.

When you walk into your memories, you are opening a door to the past; the road within has many branches, and the route is different every time

I'm sure it must have been even more wonderful then, when we were young and knew nothing about the pain of growing up.

you read a novel to the end, then it's over. I would never want to do something as wasteful as that. I'd much rather keep it here with me, safe and sound, forever.