I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I'm going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.

There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.

If there is any human tragedy, there is only one, and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence inside our skin.

The system shaves the dice on the side of those with money and power, and anyone who believes otherwise deserves anything that happens to him.

You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.

And like most middle-aged people who hear the clock ticking in their lives, I had come to resent a waste or theft of my time that was greater than any theft of my goods or money.

How do you explain to yourself the casual manner in which you threw your life away?

...and I wonder if there is any way to adequately describe the folly that causes us to undo all the great gifts of both Earth and Heaven.

When you find the right people, you never let go. The people who count are the ones who are your friends in lean times. You have all the friends you want when things are going well.

That's one of the great advantages of age. You can say, I don't want to, I don't care, you can throw temper tantrums, and nobody minds.

When people make a contract with the devil and give him an air-conditioned office to work in, he doesn't go back home easily.

Where should I go?" -Alice. "That depends on where you want to end up." - The Cheshire Cat.

When you are genuinely preoccupied in serving others using your talent and experience, doors that you have never knocked start to open up...

And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. (“How to Write with Style”. Essay, 1985)

The fact of the matter is actions speak louder than words.

Being in L.A. is great because there are so many weird people out there, so you can just blend in. I like that.

I bought almost every single thing that I furnished my house with at the Salvation Army in Hawaii. All second hand. Some of them are kind of retro, and some of them you'd never know.

Trust your first instinct.

If you sprinkle when you tinkle please be neat and wipe the seat.

After a while, though the grief did not go away from us, it grew quiet. What had seemed a storm wailing through the entire darkness seemed to come in at last and lie down.

Buddhists and Christians contrive to agree about death Making death their ideal basis for different ideals. The Communists however disapprove of death Except when practical.