Going back to Hemingway's work after several years is like going back to a brook where you had often fished and finding the woods as deep and cool as they used to be.

The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood.

Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you.

They tell you that you'll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don't tell you is that you won't miss it very much.

Put cotton in your ears and pebbles in your shoes. Pull on rubber gloves. Smear Vaseline over your glasses, and there you have it: instant old age.

It is the fear of being as dependent as a young child, while not being loved as a child is loved, but merely being kept alive against one's will.

Writing offers fairly large rewards to a few successful people, but the rewards come late, and most writers are failures.

Be kind and considerate with your criticism... It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.

Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens

Any fiction should be a story. In any story there are three elements: persons, a situation, and the fact that in the end something has changed. If nothing has changed, it isn't a story.

Age is not different from earlier life as long as you're sitting down

Which road, which road did you takeThat brought you here at last?No road, no road did I take.I leaped, I leaped from dream to dream.

Chronic illness is hard. Pain is hard. Isolation is hard. The financial cost is hard. Grieving is hard and necessary and sometimes takes far longer than we every imagined.

I need the ting but not ting ting ting

With great responsibility comes great power.

Civility, politeness, it's like a cement in a society: binds it together. And when we lose it, then I think we all feel lesser and slightly dirty because of it.

I don't think the Hulk is a superhero. He's the first Marvel character who is a tragic monster. Really an anti-hero.

I didn't know a damned thing about mental illness and neither did anyone around me.

Loss provides an opportunity to take inventory of our lives, to reconsider priorities, and to determine new directions.

Success may result in winning, but winning does not necessarily mean you are a success.

People often ask how I got interested in the brain; my rhetorical answer is: 'How can anyone NOT be interested in it?' Everything you call 'human nature' and consciousness arises from it.