The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.

I've had aunts and uncles who not only haven't read my books but could hardly believe that I was a writer.

I had my bully, and it was excruciating. Not only the bully, but the intimidation I felt.

It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks.

Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil.

And he did see--that life was rotten, that there were no heroes, really, and that you couldn't trust anybody, not even yourself.

Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?

They don't actually want you to do your own thing, not unless it's their thing too.

I have lived a thousand lives lost within the pages of a book.

The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?

Affection is one of the most neglected words in the English language, that people throw the word love around like confetti when they mean affection.

Thus, Marlowe posed the silent question: could aspiring Icarus be happy with a toilsome life on land managing a plough with plodding oxen having once tasted the weightless bliss of flight?

Humor is probably the most significant characteristics of the human mind. Far more significant than reason. In fact, reason is actually a very cheap commodity.

It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

He who fights, can lose. He who doesn't fight, has already lost.

One cannot rest except after steady practice.

Those things in life that matter will give you pain as you learn to understand life.

If I had known what it would be like to have it all - I might have been willing to settle for less.

Be kind to yourself so you can be happy enough to be kind to the world.

Let no one ignorant of Mathematics enter here.

The wicked exist in this world either to be converted or that through them the good may exercise patience.