Only the slow reader will notice the odd crowd of images-flier, butcher, seal-which have gathered to comment on the aims and activities of the speeding reader, perhaps like gossips at a wedding.

The true alchemists do not change lead into gold; they change the world into words.

Blue is therefore most suitable as the color of interior life.

Sports, politics, and religion are the three passions of the badly educated.

it is discouraging to leave the past behind only to see it coming toward you like the thunderstorm which drenched you yesterday.

It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word

For me, the short story is not a character sketch, a mouse trap, an epiphany, a slice of suburban life. It is the flowering of a symbol center. It is a poem grafted onto sturdier stock.

I am unlikely to trust a sentence that comes easily.

I write because I hate. A lot. Hard.

The expression to write something down suggests a descent of thought to the fingers whose movements immediately falsify it.

The speeding reader guts a book the way the skillful clean fish. The gills are gone, the tail, the scales, the fins; then the fillet slides away swifly as though fed to a seal.

Fear deprive us of what we can possess.

But she does it anyway, and I sit beside her...because strength is a choice.

Each of us is a story, waiting for a devoted reader who will take us off the shelf and embrace all our plot twists.

I'm not a big theory person. So when I get asked questions that demand serious statements, I just make it up.

I love to work. I'll work all the time, unless somebody stops me. I love it, love it, love it!

I was never interested in being a rock star. I always wanted to be Boris Karloff.

The only way to do my job without optimism would be as a cynic, and that's not my nature.

The violence of sorrow is not at the first to be striven withal; being, like a mighty beast, sooner tamed with following than overthrown by withstanding.

My music should evoke a feeling; whether it's a feeling in your stomach, goosebumps, whatever. When you don't get a feeling then there's a problem.

Our goal in making these changes is to enable Microsoft to achieve greater agility in managing the incredible growth ahead and executing our software-based services strategy.