We need to read good books, and for that to happen, we need to share good books.

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.

If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

The most successful people started from NOTHING... they didn't wait for the opportunity to knock but created the opportunity on their own... worked hard and made history.

Whatever you attempt, if your attitude sucks, so will you.

I define influence simply as literary love, tempered by defense. The defenses vary from poet to poet. But the overwhelming presence of love is vital to understanding how great literature works.

What should move us to action is human dignity: the inalienable dignity of the oppressed, but also the dignity of each of us. We lose dignity if we tolerate the intolerable.

No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

A quiet mediocrity is still to be preferred before a troubled superfluity.

Christ ought to be preached with this goal in mind--that we might be moved to faith in him so that he is not just a distant historical figure but actually Christ for you and me.

I had to find a relationship with someone who could simultaneously make me grow up and keep me forever young.