Thoreau on Nature as Prayer

“In the street and in society I am almost invariably cheap and dissipated, my life is unspeakably mean.”

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Nobel Laureate André Gide on the Five Elements of a Great Work of Art

“You come to doubt whether there is any secret there; it seems that you touch the depths at once. But ten years later you return to it and enter still more deeply.”

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Neither Victims Nor Executioners: Albert Camus on the Antidote to Violence

“If he who bases his hopes on human nature is a fool, he who gives up in the face of circumstances is a coward.”

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A Burst of Light: Audre Lorde on Turning Fear Into Fire

“I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out my ears, my eyes, my noseholes — everywhere. Until it’s every breath I breathe. I’m going to go out like a fucking meteor!”

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Sylvia Beach and the World’s First International Writers’ Protest

When 167 literary titans banded together in solidarity with “that security of works of the intellect and the imagination without which art cannot live.”

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