I'll hold on to the world tight some day. I've got one finger on it now; that's a beginning.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

I walk the darkness with a smile.

What if I couldn't handle people's opinions of me? I know that shouldn't dictate a person's degree of peace or happiness in life, but the problem is, I chose a business saturated in judgment.

To be extravagant you need money. True. But you do not need your own money.

Jon: Have you seen the wall? | Sam: I'm fat, not blind.

The hopeless grief of those poor colored people affected me more than almost anything else.

Only friendship which can stand occasional plain speaking is worth having.

I've never let my school interfere with my education.

You always think that a bolt of lightning is going to strike and your parents will magically change into the people you wish they were, or back into the people they used to be.

The will of the people shall be the law of the land