What I absorbed from autobiographies was not how to be great so much as the littleness of the great.

Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.

It's a sign of your own worth sometimes if you are hated by the right people.

there is a law of retribution in all things, direct or indirect, visible or invisible.

To grow up in intimate association with nature - animal and vegetable - is an irreplaceable form of wealth and culture.

Heed the spark or you may dread the fire.

It is the highest form of culture and craftmanship in art to use local materials. That way you stand a chance of adding to culture. The other way you are in danger of merely imitating it.

Girls! Girls! Those of you who have hearts, and therefore a wish for happiness, homes and husbands by and by, never develop a reputation for being clever.

There are only two kinds of parents. Those who think their offspring can do nothing wrong, and those who think they can do nothing right.

Every now and again it would be considered wholesome for me to be more with people of my own age. Demotion to such company was a sapless exile. Their inanity was insufferable.

In the career of a prodigy there invariably comes a time when it is compelled to relinquish being very clever for a child, and has to enter the business of life in competition with adults.

Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.

She told me that she loved me. She told me that everything would be okay. She told me to let go

when you see me i see you

In retrospect, the pace of change in the arts and industry in the nineteenth century seems pretty glacial. Painting, music, the novel, architecture were all evolving, but at a pretty observable pace.

I know that being an in-house person is much, much harder than being outside...that's why I've never had a job.

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

Love is a continual interrogation. I don’t know of a better definition of love.

Axl [Rose] is not the type of person to make something up. So I was sort of shocked that he went that direction. That caused me a lot of problems.

All the higher life forms scythed away, just like that. [ . . . ] Nothing but dust and fundamentalists.

The Coca-Cola Mean Joe Greene ad is one of the most famous commercials of all time, so I was blown away when they asked me to be in this new spot.