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“I call that man awake who, with conscious knowledge and understanding, can perceive the deep unreasoning powers in his soul, his whole innermost strength, desire and weakness, and knows how to reckon with himself.”
― Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund

“How come you write the way you do?â€� an apprentice writer in my Johns Hopkins workshop once disingenuously asked Donald Barthelme, who was visiting. Without missing a beat, Don replied, “Because Samuel Beckett was already writing the way he »å´Ç±ð²õ.â€�
Asked another, smiling but serious, “How can we become better writers than we are?�
“Well," DB advised, “for starters, read through the whole history of philosophy, from the pre-Socratics up through last semester. That might help.�
“But Coach Barth has already advised us to read all of literature, from Gilgamesh up through last semester...�
“That, too,â€� Donald affirmed, and twinkled that shrewd Amish-farmer-from-West-11th-Street twinkle of his. “You’re probably wasting time on things like eating and sleeping. Cease that, and read all of philosophy and all of literature. Also art. Plus politics and a few other things. The history of everything.”
― John Barth, Further Fridays: Essays, Lectures, and Other Nonfiction, 1984 - 1994

“Who read by night above the Rhine the cloudscript of the drifting mists? It was the Steppenwolf. And who over the ruins of his life pursued its fleeting, fluttering significance, while he suffered its seeming meaninglessness and lived its seeming madness, and who hoped in secret at the last turn of the labyrinth of Chaos for revelation and God's presence?”
― Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf