I want my prose to be as clear as a pane of glass.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

Don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else.

You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.

among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

Public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.

In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

The most valuable lessons come not from teachers or textbooks, but from life experience.

These days no one challenges us, ' he said. 'And because there is no challenge, there is no reason to work hard. And with no reason to work hard, we have all become lazy.

My deepest belief is that to live as if we're dying can set us free. Dying people teach you to pay attention and to forgive and not to sweat the small things.

My mum wants the best for me. And I like having my mum around me.

Don't drown yourself in details. Look at the whole.

Swaraj will favour Hinduism no more than Islam, nor Islam more than Hinduism.

If I say, 'Hey, I'm Psy.' 'Psy?' 'The guy from the video on YouTube?' 'Oh.' I hate that. I've got to be more popular than the video. So I need to keep promoting myself.

I've been to Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait for brief visits at conferences, and they are very interesting countries.

I feel terribly vulnerable and 'not-myself' when I'm not writing.

While I relish our warm months, winter forms our character and brings out our best.