Well, I have an idea, usually a visual image of some sort. A setting. A particular, I don't know, urban scene, a particular time of day. Something that grips my imagination for some reason.

True education flowers at the point when delight falls in love with responsibility.

You cannot change what you are, only what you do.

That's the duty of the old, to be anxious on behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you.

We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts: we need books, time, and silence. Thou shalt not is soon forgotten, but Once upon a time lasts forever.

I stopped believing there was a power of good and a power of evil that were outside us. And I came to believe that good and evil are names for what people do, not for what they are.

If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.

Read like a butterfly, write like a bee.

Just finished 'Secrecy' - truly enthralling both as a love story and as a tale of suspense - but much more than both.

God is the distance between light and darkness.

Material creation begins in a tiny corner of a large island called imagination.

I started dieting. I dieted, dieted, dieted and tried all the diets and I would lose and then I would go back to normal eating and would put it on and then some.

Why should poetry have to make sense?

The attitude of unconditional self-acceptance is probably the most important variable in their long-term recovery.

I'm going to be climbing for my whole life.

If you look at ISIS, General MacArthur, and General Patton, they're spinning in their graves.

...their eyes are full of kindness as each feels the full effect of novelty after a short separation. They are drawing a relaxation from each other's presence, a new serenity.

I'm growing older, but not up.

This president [Barack Obama] is someone who has done more to protect and keep together families with DACA and then with DAPA.