The novel is a prose narrative of some length that has something wrong with it.

A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.

One of the most obvious facts about grownups to a child is that they have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

The ways we miss our lives are life.

The people who live in a golden age usually go around complaining how yellow everything looks.

It is always hard for poets to believe that one says their poems are bad not because one is a fiend but because their poems are bad.

Read at whim! Read at whim!

We can't tell our life from our wish

It is better to entertain an idea than to take home to live with you for the rest of your life.

Pain comes from the darkness. And we call it wisdom. It is pain.

Except from the Americans—but every pearl has its oyster.

Fame means being respected by everybody, or having some quality that is desired by all men, or by most, or by the good, or by the wise.

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press and that cannot be limited without being lost.

I don't believe that old cliche that good things come to those who wait. I think good things come to those who want something so bad they can't sit still.

Pain is part of the sport.

I shall drink no #‎ wine before it's time! OK, it's time.

There's a lot of power in the word 'no,' and a lot of people, like myself, need to know that.

When we get to what happens when we die, we don't have any video footage. So let's at least be honest that we are speculating, because we are.

There is no such thing as luck; there is only adequate or inadequate preparation to cope with a statistical universe.

To paint nature you must be in it a long time.

Those who say Islam is a warlike religion must ask if Christianity has been as well.