I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear. I do not fear it: I have been there.

Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.

If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier.

If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.

I ride earth's burning carousel. Day in, day out.

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

Go out and do something. It isn’t your room that’s a prison, it’s yourself.

I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell.

Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.

I still believe that the Democrats have it right about health care, education, the war in Iraq and, yes the war on terror.

Take a good rest, small bird," he said. "Then go in and take your chance like any man or bird or fish.

Every man needs a place to go to.

In music, all hearts are revealed to us.

Always have your own opinion and belief.

To attract money, you must focus on wealth.

When the ruler is obedient to God, God is his protector and friend.

For they had learned that true safety was to be found in long previous training, and not in eloquent exhortations uttered when they were going into action.

An integral part of any relationship is knowing that you could be killed in your sleep at any time.

Every day, I walk with my dog - summer, winter (it gets -20 F in Saint Paul), rain or shine. The nicer the day, of course, the longer the walk.