It used to be fashionable for authors to have their pictures taken with dogs, but the dogs always looked like models hired from an advertising agency, and probably were.

Extraordinary people survive under the most terrible circumstances and they become more extraordinary because of it.

There is no nonsense so gross that society will not, at some time, make a doctrine of it and defend it with every weapon of communal stupidity.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

I cannot imagine any boy of spirit who would not be delighted to play a drunkard even to vomiting in front of his Sunday school. Indeed, the vomiting might be the chief attraction of the role.

The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past.

A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.

A man must be obedient to the promptings of his innermost heart.

Art is wine and experience is the brandy we distill from it.

Conversation in its true meaning isn't all wagging the tongue; sometimes it is a deeply shared silence.

The dog is a yes-animal. Very popular with people who can't afford a yes man.

Do not let let difficulties overcome your true purpose

Expectations have no effect on the harvest.

Koji pulled Ruben onto the next cog. Together, they became part of the space between things.

I was emotionally scarred we could not get it away

What gardening teaches us is that if you plant things, they'll come up. But you have to be willing to wait for them to bear fruit because things are seasonal.

Son, you'll know you're in love when a woman's voice settles into your spine.

Once you've put one of his [Henry James] books down, you simply can't pick it up again.

I sit waiting for things that I can't refuse.

I gotta think that one that becomes a philosophy of work, which is "no excuses."

A fanatic is a man who, when he's lost sight of his purpose, redoubles his effort.