Friendship is an island that you retreat to and you all fall on the floor and laugh at all the other ninnies that don't have enough brains to have your good taste.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine.

...and that there were many things grow-ups did which couldn't properly be judged by young people until the young people were grown-ups themselves...

To love someone is to see a miracle invisible to others.

Not taking risks ultimately leads to failure.

What ought one to say then as each hardship comes? I was practicing for this, I was training for this.

Many studies have discovered a close link between prejudice and "patriotism" . . . Extreme bigots are almost always super-patriots.

I grew up rock climbing.

Being with a kid always takes you to being a kid somehow, and they really are showing me a childhood I might not have had in some way.

Since I left basketball, and my wife, it's been a glorious feast of lovemaking.

White has no positional equivalent for the centralized pawn.