Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

Books are made not like children but like pyramids and they're just as useless! And they stay in the desert! Jackals piss at their foot and the bourgeois climb up on them.

The better a work is, the more it attracts criticism; it is like the fleas who rush to jump on white linens.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

Gen. Banks has issued an order for the instruction of Negro children. Schoolhouses are to be built or rented and Teachers hired for this purpose, and the farmers and planters are to pay the Taxes in support of this.

You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.