For me, language is something that I've always loved. When I read, that's what I look for. When I write, that's what I strive for.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.

If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

the greatest men that ever live pass away unknown. they put forth no claims for themselves, establish no schools of systems in their name. they never create or stir but just melt down into love

In the meantime, the first characteristic of a really revolutionary party is -- to be able to look reality in the face.

Our judgments judge us, and nothing reveals us, exposes our weaknesses, more ingeniously than the attitude of pronouncing upon our fellows.

In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.

I think Mr. Wilson will have to be the rest of the way alone.

Yet a real artist, I've noticed, will survive anything. (Even praise, I happily suspect.)

Because we can imagine, we are free.

A constitution is framed for ages to come, and is designed to approach immortality as nearly as human institutions can approach it.

Like a tropical storm, I, too, may one day become ‘better organized.

If you are not passionately devoted to an idea, you can make very pleasant pictures but they won't make you cry.