When I Was 17, My Father Was So Stupid, I Didn't Want To Be Seen With Him In Public. When I Was 24, I Was Amazed at How Much The Old Man Had learned In Just 7 Years.
There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother.
Shakespeare carries us to such a lofty strain of intelligent activity, as to suggest a wealth which beggars his own; and we then feel that the splendid works which he has created, and which in other hours we extol as a sort of self-existent poetry, take no stronger hold of real nature than the shadow of a passing traveller on the rock. The inspiration which uttered itself in Hamlet and Lear could utter things as good from day to day, for ever.
When I Was 8 Years Old, I Became Depressed. I Kept Asking Why I Was Born This Way [without Arms And Legs]. I Also Worried About My Future. At The Age Of 10, I Tried To Commit Suicide Because I Felt Like Giving Up. But When I Imagined My Loving Parents Crying At My Grave, I Decided To Stay.
Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head. But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition... and also read those whose darkness or malice or madness or greatness you can't understand because only in this way will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are.
There's a group of 12 oak trees on my property in California that I call 'my disciples.' Their branches form a canopy over the ground, and I sit underneath them for inspiration.