Doing what you do well is death. Your duty is to keep trying to do things that you don't do well, in the hope of learning.

Fictional characters are made of words, not flesh; they do not have free will, they do not exercise volition. They are easily born, and as easily killed off.

In order really to write one has to sink deep into the self and become lost there.

All my life I have lied. I lied to escape, I lied to be loved, I lied for placement and power; I lied to lie. It was a way of living; lies are life's almost-anagram.

The past beats inside me like a second heart.

If I was asked to say what was the greatest invention of human beings, I would say the sentence.

Everything we do is tinged with the knowledge that this may be the last time that we will do this, and that makes what we're doing incredibly sweet.

We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.

To take possession of a city of which you are not a native you must first fall in love there.

For memory, we use our imagination. We take a few strands of real time and carry them with us, then like an oyster we create a pearl around them.

A man is not much if he can't depend on himself, and nothing if others can't depend on him.

Pictures were completely eliminated from mathematics; in particular when I was young this happened in a very strong fashion.

Man is something to be surpassed.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a pair of good-luck pennies, and our lives.

Survival is an art. It requires the dulling of the mind and the senses, and a delicate attunement to waiting, without insisting on precision about just what it is you are waiting for.

One does not "manage" people. The task is to lead people.

Before you eat food or drink water, look at what you're about to eat or drink and feel love and gratitude. Make sure your conversations are positive when you are sitting down to a meal.

Peace is the precious fruit of a righteous life. It is possible because of the Atonement of the Savior. It is earned through full repentance, for that leads to refreshing forgiveness.

We all have an escape. Mine was theater.

Remorse is the pain of sin.