Some people say their life is full of darkness and I wonder why they don't just try and switch the lights on.

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.

If you leave your life to chance, you can't make a change. Chance may favour a prepared mind, but it doesn't create change! Will does so.

IT’S ALL CLEARISIS INVADES YOUR SPHEREYET NO ONE IMAGINES YOUR FEARBUT DON'T WORRYTAUSSI MELEK IS HERERESTORING LIVES NEAR

In the playoffs, it is do or die. You win or you go home. As a competitor, you love it.

To win this war, we have been forced into a strategic compromise which will most certainly offend the Russians.

When all hopes are lost, only then does reality acquire that sharp focus that defines who we are and what we have become.

Forgive yourself first. Let go of past hurts and direct your spirit to goodness and hope by having gratitude.

But to put out a greatest hits on one CD was totally impossible, I just couldn't do it. The best compromise was to put out two CDs - Early Days - which is what it is - and Latter Days.

I remember the very thing that I do not wish to; I cannot forget the things I wish to forget.

Study your strengths; then decide how hard you want to work

President Obama is an extraordinary person to work with and for.