Quotes about Experience

A man must understand evil and be acquainted with sorrow before he can write himself an optimist and expect others to believe that he has reason for the faith that is in him.

Only by contact with evil could I have learned to feel by contrast the beauty of truth and love and goodness.

Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I've never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl.

'Scar Tissue' is the only book I've ever written when I've felt completely toxic, ill.

Most of the great books on prayer are written by 'experts' - monks, missionaries, mystics, saints. I've read scores of them, and mainly they make me feel guilty.

I did go there later, but I hadn't been there before I wrote the book. Sometimes I feel like the imagined can feel more real than the real?

I believe that hunger for a 'lost dimension' of experience is a natural yearning in all of us, and it doesn't go away just because we ignore it. It is evidenced among other places in the millions of children and adults who obsessively read the 'Harry Potter' books. It is said that fiction is where someone gets to tell the truth.

I worked for Xerox for 4 years and after that I knew I was never going to be a corporate person. It wasn't my environment.

I came into this music business at 26 years old. I was a fully developed man at that point. At that age, I didn't have anything to prove.

As a matter of fact, I didn't make a political speech outside of my state for 20 years.

I'm not a religious person, but I read the Bible many years ago.

Having one's traditional role questioned is not a very comfortable experience, perhaps especially for women, who have been able to remain children, and to benefit from work they did not and could not do.