Don't let anyone tell you that age purchases your freedom from fear of death.

There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.

I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I'm going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.

If there is any human tragedy, there is only one, and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence inside our skin.

The system shaves the dice on the side of those with money and power, and anyone who believes otherwise deserves anything that happens to him.

You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.

And like most middle-aged people who hear the clock ticking in their lives, I had come to resent a waste or theft of my time that was greater than any theft of my goods or money.

How do you explain to yourself the casual manner in which you threw your life away?

...and I wonder if there is any way to adequately describe the folly that causes us to undo all the great gifts of both Earth and Heaven.

When you find the right people, you never let go. The people who count are the ones who are your friends in lean times. You have all the friends you want when things are going well.

That's one of the great advantages of age. You can say, I don't want to, I don't care, you can throw temper tantrums, and nobody minds.

Perhaps all the good that ever has come here has come because people prayed it into the world.

Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary confinement is a great deal harder to bear than compulsory.

This is the end of this subject for me for a long time.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the conversation.

If children haven't been read to, they don't love books. They need to love books, for books are the basis of literature, composition, history, world events, vocabulary, and everything else.

The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.

You'll never learn a thing from a competitor weaker than you.

Art is a big question mark.

God bless my father, but he always spoke in this continental, literary accent, probably because he was a professor of comparative literature and he made the decision to speak with distinction.

Risks are a measure of people. People who won't take them are trying to preserve what they have. People who do take them often end up having more.