I got my heart's desire, and there my troubles began.

If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so.

It's time to live with what we have and mourn what we lost.

The truth doesn't always make a good story, does it?

It was so much easier to be angry. Being angry made him feel strong, even though-- and this contradiction did nothing to diminish his anger-- he was angry only because his position was so weak.

In Fillory you felt the appropriate emotions when things happened. Happiness was a real, actual, achievable possibility. It came when you called. Or no, it never left you in the first place.

It wasn't nothing, but it wasn't everything either.

Language and reality are kept strictly apart—reality is tough, unyielding stuff, and it doesn’t care what you think or feel or say about it. Or it shouldn’t.

Becoming me was the greatest creative project of my life.

You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.

You just had to get some idea of what matters and what doesn't, and how much, and try not to be scared of the stuff that doesn't. Put it in perspective.

If someone gives you tough situation, it's better to make a distance.

The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.

Engineering, medicine, business, architecture and painting are concerned not with the necessary but with the contingent - not with how things are but with how they might be - in short, with design.

Mastery does not come from dabbling. We have to be prepared to pay the price. We need to have the sustained enthusiasm that motivates us to give our best.

[Tomas] Jefferson believed that the United States was a chosen nation with a special responsibility to spread democracy around the world.

If you desire the spirit of God you must keep the commandments of God.

It is never right to compromise with dishonesty.

Here was what Kilgore Trout cried out to me in my father's voice: "Make me young, make me young, make me young!

We should look long and carefully at ourselves before we pass judgement on others.

I think provincialism is an endemic characteristic with mankind, I think everybody everywhere is provincial, but it is particularly striking with Texans, and we tend to be very Texcentric.