I shall start at the beginning. Though of coarse, the beginning is never where you think it is.

I have always been a reader; I have read at every stage of my life, and there has never been a time when reading was not my greatest joy

I don't pretend reality is the same for everyone.

Once upon a time there was a fairy godmother, but the rest of the time there was none. This story is about one of those other times.

For me to see is to read. It has always been that way.

Of course I loved books more than people.

Boys do not leave their boyhood behind when they leave off their school uniform.

A good story is always more dazzling than a broken piece of truth.

But silence is not a natural environment for stories. They need words. Without them they grown pale, sicken and die. And then they haunt you.

When I was a child, books were everything. And so there is in me, always, a nostalgic, yearning for the lost pleasure of books. It is not a yearning that one ever expects to be fulfilled.

A story so cherished it has to be dressed in casualness to disguise its significance in case the listener turned out to be unsympathetic.

You MUST do what you love. Sometimes your passion will be the only thing that keeps you motivated.

Like all beings, I will eventually add my energy and matter and light to the fabric of the universe, a single strand in its amazing tapestry.

A storm is never quiet because it is always calling out to the rainbow.

Democracy is not about making speeches. It is about making committees work.

A guilty mind can be eased by nothing but repentance; by which what was ill done is revoked and morally voided and undone.

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.

Leaders must pick causes they won't abandon easily, remain committed despite setbacks, and communicate their big ideas over and over again in every encounter.

Without the word dream, or the concept dream, and without the word blue and the emotions, I would have been really limited in the things I've written and performed.

Every man has something to do which he neglects, every man has faults to conquer which he delays to combat.

He wears his faith but as the fashion of his hat.