I have tried to live very quietly, so I could be happy.

The day misspent, the love misplaced, has inside it the seed of redemption. Nothing is exempt from resurrection.

Small presses take chances. Chances are at the heart of all the literature we later know as great.

As for reality, I don't even have any interest in that word.

Who would have guessed it possible that waiting is sustainable. A place with its own harvest.

Failure: the renewable resource.

What keeps me writing is that I can only know through writing. My major sense organ is apparently a pencil.

A too closely watched flower/blossoms the wrong color./Excess attention to the jonquil/turns it gentian. Flowers/need it tranquil to get/their hues right. Some/only open at midnight.

A lot of the job that one has to do as a writer is to protect the thing that doesn't match the world.

It's important to have your private enjoyments because sometimes that's all we have.

It isn't ever delicate to live.

Relative poverty is when you have more taste than money.

One hour of life crowded to the full with glorious action and filled with noble risks is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum.

The challenge of education is not to prepare a person for success, but to prepare him for failure.

I labored for eight years thinking that I was writing a book for adults that was a nostalgic look back on childhood. Then my publisher informed me I'd written a children's book.

To be great we need to win games we aren't supposed to win.

I have been rich and I have been poor. I know which one I prefer.

A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist.

You can't make someone feel good about themselves until you feel good about yourself.

I'm a big believer in the Christian faith. I don't push it on anyone, though.

Believing in yourself is the first step to accomplishing any goal. If you think you're going to fail, you probably will.