Statuettes of drunken sailors, velvet pictures of island maidens, plastic seashell lamps made in Taiwan. What contempt the people who think up souvenirs have for other people.

A chaplain's biggest gift is to be present and just listen.

Not having to own a car has made me realize what a waste of time the automobile is.

Women have the feeling that since they didn't make the rules, the rules have nothing to do with them.

Laughter is the jam on the toast of life. It adds flavor, keeps it from being too dry, and makes it easier to swallow.

...is this not in fact the purpose of young Americans going abroad? To make them think of things they never thought of?

The whole process of writing a novel is having this great, beautiful idea and then spoiling it.

In what we think of as bad dialogue, the characters talk directly to each other.

Glenda Adams has written a wicked and witty novel.

But novels are never about what they are about; that is, there is always deeper, or more general, significance. The author may not be aware of this till she is pretty far along with it.

Any essayist setting out on a frail apparatus of notings and jottings is a brave person.

Have you ever asked yourself this question "what can God do through me?" The preacher has no platform if the people has no sense of mission.

When walking alone in a jungle of true darkness, there are three things that can show you the way: instinct to survive, the knowledge of navigation, creative imagination. Without them, you are lost.

In the midst of the naysayers, he kept doubting himself and finally gave up. But all he had to do was to surround himself with positive people to be successful.

Living too much in one's head can be dangerous.

Some are bound to die young. By dying young a person stays young in people's memory. If he burns brightly before he dies, his brightness shines for all time.

There is light somewhere.

To get a human through a life, lives of broken bones, knock-me-over-with-a-feather susceptibility to myriad viruses, and whatever else might befall someone will cost money.

I don't feel like I am 66 at all. I feel more like I am 35. But I have a bus pass so it must be true.

each new poem is partly propelled by the formal energies of all the poems that have preceded it in the history of literature.

True zeal is an ignis lambeus, a soft and gentle flame, that will not scorch one's hand.