It is hard to imagine Thomas Kinkade as anything less than supremely self-assured.

Orchid hunting is a mortal occupation.

I think of myself as something of a connoisseur of procrastination, creative and dogged in my approach to not getting things done.

Living in a rural setting exposes you to so many marvelous things - the natural world and the particular texture of small-town life, and the exhilarating experience of open space.

You have to simply love writing, and you have to remind yourself often that you love it.

Libraries are what is best about us as a society: open, exciting, rich, informative, free, inclusive, engaging.

One of the very best reasons for having children is to be reminded of the incomparable joys of a snow day.

A snow day literally and figuratively falls from the sky, unbidden, and seems like a thing of wonder.

An ordinary life examined closely reveals itself to be exquisite and complicated and exceptional, somehow managing to be both heroic and plain.

There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to.

Even after I'd published three books and had been writing full-time for twenty years, my father continued to urge me to go to law school.

Jump in the urinal and stand on your head. I'm the one that's alive. You're all dead.

Be real to others. You can be fake only to yourself.

I don't think our family is falling apart and getting destroyed. I just think it's rearranging itself in the way God meant it to be because it wasn't working how it was.

love of learning is the most necessary passion ... in it lies our happiness. It's a sure remedy for what ails us, an unending source of pleasure.

Soon all of you immortals Will be as dead as we are! Come on then, what are you waiting for? Have you run out of thunderbolts?

I have no designs on society, or nature, or God. I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past, and anticipate the future. I love to live.

The blindness of unbelievers in no way detracts from the clarity of the gospel; the sun is no less bright because blind men do not perceive its light.

As I traveled from one country to another, no one knew anything about me. So I could be anybody, I could speak as I wished, act as I wished, dress as I wished

True words are not pleasing. Pleasing words are not true.

People who cost too much: manager, lawyer, publicist, label, music publisher.