I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you.Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged.

I still need some more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.

The more I'm let alone and not worried the better I can function.

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg adress was so short. The laws of prose writing are immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics. Fr letter to Maxwell Perkins 1945

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

Don't let yourself slip and get any perfect characters... keep them people, people, people, and don't let them get to be symbols.

Do this exercise: Demolish the bridges of pessimism behind you. If you do this very well, you'll have no other choice than to move forward! Successful people are always optimistic!

One thing I probably share with everyone else in the astronaut office is composure.

When it comes to success, there are no shortcuts.

I haven't reached nirvana yet, but I've been to Detroit.

Generally I'm wide open to people; I love helping them in any way I possibly can. But for me to invest, a business has to have a lot of creative scale; it has to be unique.

The uplifters are forever running around telling blockheads they would do better if they would believe in themselves. But they already do. That is why they are blockheads.

Human beings are storytelling animals. That's what separates us from other creatures, not just having thumbs or using tools.

Your son and your daughter needs an excellent father more than an excellent college.

Art, like Nature, has her monsters, things of bestial shape and with hideous voices.

If suffer we must, let's suffer on the heights.