Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth.

Big doesn't necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren't better than violets.

We no longer build fireplaces for physical warmth—we build them for the warmth of the soul; we build them to dream by, to hope by, to home by.

The goat's business is none of the sheep's concern.

Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight.

A closed mind is a dying mind.

Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.

It was part of theTexas ritual? We know about champagne and caviar but we talk hog and hominy.

There are only two kinds of people in the world that really count. One kind's wheat and the other kind's emeralds.

Funny, isn't it, how your whole life goes by while you think you're only planning the way you're going to live it?

The feminine in the man is the sugar in the whisky. The masculine in the woman is the yeast in the bread. Without these ingredients the result is flat, without tang or flavor.

To oppose corruption in government is the highest obligation of patriotism.

Regardless of what the tour pros think, golf is a rich and varied game, and what all of us awkward fools do on weekends is what golf is truly all about.

There is hardly any activity, any enterprise, which is started out with such tremendous hopes and expectations, and yet which fails so regularly, as love.

Reading is more important to me than eating.

Woah! Calm down, Curly!

the vicious result of privilege is that the creature who receives it becomes incapacitated by it as by a disease.

Loving yourself—it really takes a daily practice.

The blessing of heaven will not accompany the preaching that is done in a worldly manner.

I was willing to pay any price including subservience to secure this love, hoping that with each piece of myself I gave up he would be so pleased that he, too, would be transformed.

The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble because we are sorry, angry, or fearful as the case may be.