My tunes and numbers are here. They have filled my years, the years when I refused to die. And in order to do that I wrote, I wrote, I wrote, at noon or 3:00 A.M. So as not to be dead.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.

Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall.

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything.

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

Sometimes you just have to jump out the window and grow wings on the way down.

I know you've heard it a thousand times before. But it's true - hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don't love something, then don't do it.

Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

Cynicism! That, no doubt is a greater crime than heresy.

She was good at playing abstract confusion in the same way that a midget is good at being short.

Heaven forming each on other to depend, A master, or a servant, or a friend, Bids each on other for assistance call, Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.

I keep on working when other people are out having fun. But I love what I do and find it hard to stop.

I've learned so much from my mistakes... I'm thinking of making some more.

I guess a lot of times pressure is put on something after it becomes big.

From my mother, a rock, / I have learned that rocks give / most of all.

I am now old enough to make common cause with my predecessors against my successors.

When you're young and have a dream, it's pretty simplistic. You don't think about or have any way of knowing everything it can be, and anticipate that.

I think that the church has to develop its own agenda, and not allow itself to be consumed by either party to the chagrin of the people that we seek to serve.