I want fame more than I can tell. But more than I want fame I want happiness.

When I was three years old I was taken with my family to a little town in Western Minnesota, where I lived a more or less vapid and ordinary life until I was ten.

I do not see any beauty in self-restraint.

The world is like a little marsh filled with mint and white hawthorn.

Fame is indeed beautiful and benign and gentle and satisfying, but happiness is something at once tender and brilliant beyond all things.

I am lithe, but fragile from constant involuntary self-analysis.

Genius of a kind has always been with me; an empty heart that has taken on a certain wooden quality; an excellent, strong woman's body and a pitiably starved soul.

A genius who does not know that he is a genius is no genius.

I do not sing nor play, but I adore music, particularly Chopin. I like him because I cannot understand him.

One must always say things that aim to interest, because in the world one must after all pay for one's keep.

I read of the Kalamazoo girl who killed herself after reading the book. I am not at all surprised. She lived in Kalamazoo, for one thing, and then she read the book.

We’re here, and then we’re gone, and it’s not about the time we’re here, but what we do with the time.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Education is a change of mind, an acceptance, and an assimilation.

Love is the only thing that increases twofold every time it is shared.

I never was a crazy liquor drinker, and I don't like beer that much - though I keep the brews at home because my homies love beer.

When people give you their stated reason for doing something always assume they are giving you a reason that sounds good, but not the real reason.

I play piano and guitar. Acoustic guitar. I tried studying classical guitar when I was 16 but it got really hard. I could never play a lead to save my life.

The people who have the power want you scared. They want you walking around paralyzed by the notion that you could die at any moment.

The recommended daily requirement for hugs is: four per day for survival, eight per day for maintenance, and twelve per day for growth.

Life is worth celebrating and worth living even though we're all headed to the same hole at the end of the day.