I think most serious writers, certainly in the modern period, use their own lives or the lives of people close to them or lives they have heard about as the raw material for their creativity.

I've begun to realize that you can listen to silence and learn from it. It has a quality and a dimension all its own.

Art is whether or not there is a scream in him wanting to get out in a special way.

Something that is yours forever is never precious

Come, let us have some tea and continue to talk about happy things.

Art begins . . . when someone interprets, when someone sees the world through his own eyes. Art happens when what is seen becomes mixed with the inside of the person who is seeing it.

Every man who has shown the world the way to beauty, to true culture, has been a rebel, a 'universal' without patriotism, without home, who has found his people everywhere.

I do not have many things that are meaningful to me. Except my doubts and my fears. And my art.

All beginnings are hard.

I don't work on my Sabbath. I write five-and-a-half or six days a week.

Two people who are true friends are like two bodies with one soul

One uncontrolled character flaw can ruin your greatest accomplishment.

Love does not dominate it cultivates.

I think test screenings with an audience are useful because they have no dog in the fight, they just say how they feel.

A life's record with God in the details can be a spiritual feast for our souls. When we count our blessings on paper, our gratitude soars. It is all so evident.

Everybody always tells you what an awesome and unique experience being a parent is. Words can never do the feeling justice.

... since she might not be splendid, she would at least be immaculate.

How can I set free anyone who doesn't have the guts to stand up alone and declare his own freedom?

Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.

Do I want to start my own production company? No, I doubt it. I'm too old for that. I don't want to start anything.

To name an object is to deprive a poem of three-fourths of its pleasure, which consists in a little-by-little guessing game; the ideal is to suggest.