I have tried to be very rational, although I know love and hate are not rational and explained feelings.

When I wake up every morning, I thank God for the new day.

November is auspicious in so many parts of the country: the rice harvest is already in, the weather starts to cool, and the festive glow which precedes Christmas has began to brighten the landscape.

Language as a communication tool is the primary element from which literature is created. Even in pre-literate societies, it exists as songs, riddles, or epics that are chanted.

Art, whatever form it takes, requires hard work, craftsmanship and creativity. As a writer, I know my grammar, cadence, the music of prose, and the art of the narrative.

All dictators, the rich and famous, to the lowest security guard who holds a gun, easily forget that power is transitory.

I have always admired teachers because teaching, like the priesthood, medicine and writing, is a vocation. You don't become a teacher because you want wealth. It is the same with writing.

The Japanese bureaucracy is unique. It is also very powerful, although it is now the object of so much criticism. Many of Japan's brightest made it a pillar of strength and continuity.

We are shallow because our media are so horribly shallow. Every morning, I peruse the papers, and there is so little to read in them. It is the same with radio - all that noise, that artifice.

We are shallow because we are 'mayabang, ' ego driven, and do not have the humility to understand that we are only human, much too human to mistake knowledge for wisdom.

Poetry is emotion, passion, love, grief - everything that is human. It is not for zombies by zombies.

How I love - writing, acting, breathing the atmosphere- and one day I'll have it. If I cannot write, I shall die.

Don't take too much comfort in the fact that you're successful today because tomorrow could bring failure. There's no surety in life.

The songs of Bizet are by a French peer of Rossini. When Rossini stopped composing, he was living in Paris. He also wrote some beautiful songs in French.

All of us blossom when we feel loved and wither when we do not feel loved.

When you're good at something, you should continue to do it. Too many players have stopped at a relatively young age.

One has to be foolish or irredeemably stupid to believe that anything good can come to Europe from the land of presumed opportunity.

...in rebellion against the typical British-type dry flies, I created the Wulff series.

When I was little, I wasn't so little. I had a big old round belly and I was really clumsy, but I was super confident.

More often there's a compromise between ethics and expediency.

Once I get outside my house in the morning, I'm on.