No writer should minimize the factor that affects everyone, but is beyond control: luck.

Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish.

The first treasure California began to surrender after the Gold Rush as the oldest: her land.

We are all dying of life.

Spend as much time as you can with your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open.

Be persistent. Editors change; tastes change; editorial markets change. Too many beginning writers give up too easily.

Guilty she might be. But what human being was not? There were things in her past she needn't be ashamed of, things to be proud of; she wouldn't surrender so meekly to a condemning judgment.

Losing innocence. Remembering Heaven. That was the essence of Hell

The best that could be left behind by any man: children who had been brought up to behave responsibly and to believe in something beyond their own self gratification. (The Americans

Human beings may be inconsistent, but human nature is true to itself

He could never be anything more than what he was: the inheritor of weakness and unbridled emotion, a creature possessed by the past, and carrying its curse forever into the future--

Grateful thanks to good friends, who lifted us, when we fall.

My slurred speech isn’t from one or nine drinks too many, it’s from my father.

There were riots in just about every game we played with Syracuse.

The seconds tick. They always do. The power of an entire sun cannot stop them even for a moment, and so death comes between the moments, like a thief of light in the dark.

Read deeply, not to believe, not to accept, not to contradict, but to learn to share in that one nature that writes and reads.

the devil does not have a fork Brianna, he has a whip

The greatest happiness in life is to be truly and consistently creative.

Faith intervenese not to abolish reason's autonomy nor to reduce its scope for action, but solely to bring the human being to understand that in these events it is the God of Israel who acts.

I made this list of stuff that it's time for me to try to do.

If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.