If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered.

you can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.

The road to hell is paved with adverbs.

When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you’re done, you have to step back and look at the forest.

Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.

Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open.

The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.

Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.

The more you read, the less apt you are to make a fool of yourself with your pen or word processor.

To write is human, to edit is divine.

Recreate your life, always, always. Remove the stones, plant rose bushes and make sweets." Begin again.

As knowledge increases, wonder deepens.

When you grow up in a city like Boston, where I grew up, a lot of kids became criminals or cops. I never really had a bad take on cops other than I hate when there's one behind me on the highway.

The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact. . . . [A] government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect . . . their governors are educated.

We weren't meant to be somebody--we were meant to know Somebody

The problem is a lot of what is called economics is not economics. It is more ideology or religion.

Score one for Team Kendall, Payton thought. Not that it was a competition between them. Not at all.

The Mad Hatter: "Would you like some wine?" Alice: "Yes..." The Mad Hatter: "We haven't any and you're too young.

I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me and the second one didn't.

In place of equal respect, the nation offered women the Miss America beauty pageant, established in 1920-the same year women won the vote.