Don't analyse your muse too closely, if at all – she'll turn away.

Write what you want to write and would like to read, not for any invisible audience. Your readers will find you.

I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.

a city square that's designed on a scale to express national greatness is hostile to the human intimacy necessary for freedom's space [George Packer, "History: Influence on Humanity"].

Wisdom is not gained by knowing what is right. Wisdom is gained by practicing what is right, and noticing what happens when that practice succeeds and when it fails.

Business ends up being very dynamic and situational.

Without tact you can learn nothing. Tact teaches you when to be silent. Inquirers who are always questioning never learn anything.

Faith does not, in the realist, spring from the miracle but the miracle from faith. If the realist once believes, then he is bound by his very realism to admit the miraculous also.

I had observed people whose identity crises around race seemed analogous to other people's identity crises around gender.

Have you ever felt trapped in circumstances, then discovered that the only trap was your own lack of vision, lack of courage, or failure to see that you had better options?

The money one gets for selling one's soul is always spent in deadening one's conscience, so the net gain at the end of a lifetime is no greater than if the diabolic bargain had not been struck.

If we nurture the dreams of children, the world will be blessed. If we destroy them, the world is doomed!