The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing.

Since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of time, you are incomparable.

This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.

I will tell you what I have learned myself. For me, a long five or six mile walk helps. And one must go alone and every day.

Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.

When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.

We are always afraid to start something that we want to make very good, true, and serious.

I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like child stringing beads in kindergarten, - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another.

The tragedy of bold, forthright, industrious people is that they act so continuously without much thinking, that it becomes dry and empty.

Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.

No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good.

Why is man obliged to learn ignorance?

We wanted Nike to be the world's best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don't end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour.

Freedom of conscience entails more dangers than authority and despotism.

I am not mad. I am eccentric perhaps--at least certain people say so; but as regards my profession. I am very much as one says, 'all there.

Unfortunately, on May 2, 2011, we killed bin Laden, but we didn't kill his message. His message lives.

Losers let it happen; winners make it happen!

I like to sit in my backyard. I go out on the hammock and sit in silence and kind of meditate. Nature is calming, and it's nice to go out there and clear my head.

with the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy.

The pain is bad magicians ripping off good ones, doing magic badly, and making a mockery of the art.

Be careful not to do your good deeds when there's no one watching you.