I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed.

One must work and dare if one really wants to live.

I knew well enough that one could fracture one's legs and arms and recover afterward, but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too.

I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? If you hear a voice within saying 'You are not a painter' then by all means paint — and that voice will be silenced.

All the same, I'm sure that if one is brave then recovery comes from within, through complete acceptance of suffering and death, and through the surrender of one's will and love of self. But that's no good to me, I like to paint, to see people and things and everything that makes our life—artificial, if you like. Yes, real life would be something else, but I don't think I belong to that category of souls who are ready to live, and also ready to suffer, at any moment.

You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas, which says to the painter, 'You can't do a thing'.

I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God's help I shall succeed. I want - to be bound to Christ with unbreakable bonds and to feel these bonds. To be sorrowful yet always rejoicing. To live in and for Christ, to be one of the poor in His kingdom, steeped in the leaven, filled with His spirit, impelled by His Love, reposing in the Father with the repose of which I wrote to you in my last letter.

So I have a horror of success.

If you hear a voice within you say ,you cannot paint,' then by all means paint. And that voice will be silenced.

Baseball is the most perfect of games, solid, true, pure and precious as diamonds. If only life were so simple. Within the baselines anything can happen. Tides can reverse; oceans can open. That's why they say, "the game is never over until the last man is out." Colors can change, lives can alter, anything is possible in this gentle, flawless, loving game.

If I had my life to live over again, I'd take more chances. I'd want more passion in my life. Less fear and more passion, more risk. Even if you fail, you've still taken a risk.