The good of a book lies in its being read.

When men stop believing in God, it isn't that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.

If you interact with things in your life, everything is constantly changing. And if nothing changes, you're an idiot.

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.

There are four types: the cretin, the imbecile, the stupid and the mad. Normality is a balanced mixture of all four.

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

To survive, you must tell stories.

But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

I believe that life is full of tragedy. Some lives more than others. But I also believe that comfort can be found with the people that love you . . . if you're willing to let them give it.

Writing is pure sweet freedom.

Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation.

I'm mad at Hank Aaron for deciding to play one more season. I threw him his last home run and thought I'd be remembered forever. Now, I'll have to throw him another.

You begin to fly when you let go of self-limiting beliefs and allow your mind and aspirations to rise to greater heights.

Well, it is a humiliating reflection, that the straightest road to a man's heart is through his palate.

I think the whole under-eye-bag thing is hereditary, and I just got lucky.

Whatever we have of this world in our hands, our care must be to keep it out of our hearts, lest it come between us and Christ.

Evidence my 14yr old daughter is geek-literate: In lieu of OK, one might type K while texting. She instead typed "Potassium".

I read pretty voraciously. If it's good, I don't care what it is.