A nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined.

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.

Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today because if you enjoy it today, you can do it again tomorrow.

The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.

I have never thought of myself as a good writer. Anyone who wants reassurance of that should read one of my first drafts. But I'm one of the world's great rewriters.

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay home.

If your book doesn't keep you up nights when you are writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it.

An age is called Dark not because the light fails to shine, but because people refuse to see it.

It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready.

No one cares what you ate for breakfast. Unless it's something really spectacular, don't tweet me your breakfast, I don't care.

Debt is the most effective way to take a relation of violent subordination and make the victims feel that it's their fault.

The wheat bought by a farmer to sow is comparatively a fixed capital to the wheat purchased by a baker to make into loaves.

I don't think science is necessarily incompatible with mystical or spiritual sensibilities. I often weigh them equally in my thinking, which sometimes finds itself into the work.

Take away the complaint, 'I have been harmed,' and the harm is taken away.

... an institution cannot be run progressively on a basis of fear.

Consumerism diverts us from thinking about women's rights, it stops us from thinking about Iraq, it stops us from thinking about what's going on in Africa - it stops us from thinking in general.

This is the wonderful truth, my dear friends: the Word, which became flesh two thousand years ago, is present today in the Eucharist

It's enough to have faith in one aspect of God. But never get into your head that your faith alone is true and every other is false.