One of underestimated tasks in nonfiction writing is to impose narrative shape on an unwieldy mass of material.

Less is more.

Writing is thinking on paper.

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills, and meaningless jargon.

Hard writing makes easy reading. Easy writing makes hard reading.

Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity, and humanity.

When you're ready to stop, stop. If you have presented all the facts and made the point you want to make, look for the nearest exit.

I almost always urge people to write in the first person. ... Writing is an act of ego and you might as well admit it.

Thought is action in rehearsal.

A clear sentence is no accident.

If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

There is nothing in the world that I cannot achieve when I have the courage to believe.

It wasn’t as if she’d thought it through or anything, how what a person wanted wasn’t always what they needed, and what a person needed might be the last thing they could ever want.

I've always kind of wrote when I wanted to. Once I get the idea in my head and get it outlined out, I usually just sit and write until it's done.

You need to be as clean of a slate as you can be, as an actor. You have to try to be open to every experience.

Embrace what makes you unique, even if it makes others uncomfortable.

I'm what you'd call a regular guy with a big job.

Eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality.

Eggnog reminds me of mucus." "Me, too. But in a good way.

There is no slavery but ignorance.

I’m not into the whole Austrian type, strongly libertarian economics. I like more mainstream economics.