The shy little Mayflower weaves her nest, But the south wind sighs o'er the fragrant loam, And betrays the path to her woodland home.

The aster greets us as we pass With her faint smile.

Beside the brook and on the umbered meadow, Where yellow fern-tufts fleck the faded ground, With folded lids beneath their palmy shadow The gentian nods in dewy slumbers bound.

When summer gathers up her robes of glory, and like a dream of beauty glides away.

The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a happy bunch of chuckleheads.

Never does Nature say one thing and Wisdom another.

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don't turn up at all.

God is not upset that Gandhi was not a Christian, because God is not a Christian! All of God's children and their different faiths help us to realize the immensity of God.

A girl should command attention, not suffer it.

Write what you know. Write what you want to know more about. Write what you're afraid to write about.

I think actions speak louder than words is one thing I think I always took from my mom. And to this day, I think about that in everything I do.

Do not copy my style! The first rule of writing is write about what you know, not what you think you know. So, think about what you've done in your life and write about that.

They'll score if they can just get into the endzone.

I hope and pray that despite an unhealed past full of atrocities and deep divisions in the present, God can and will make "the distant near" and a "brother of the stranger" in America's future.