The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

Quiet people have the loudest minds.

Generally speaking, envy, resentment, and self-pity are disastrous modes of thoughts.Self-pity gets fairly close to paranoia, and paranoia is one of the very hardest things to reverse.

To understand a culture, one must first understand its language.