Writing this book I am like a man playing the piano with lead balls attached to his knuckles.

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

I believe that if one always looked at the skies, one would end up with wings.

It seems to me that I have always existed and that I possess memories that date back to the Pharaohs.

Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier.

I tried to discover, in the rumor of forests and waves, words that other men could not hear, and I pricked up my ears to listen to the revelation of their harmony.

There is not a particle of life which does not bear poetry within it

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

The future will be what it will, and fretting about it will only make your fears more likely to come true.

The danger of prolonged despair is its tendency to cloud the gift of a new beginning that every tomorrow offers. --Anissa's Redemption

You couldn’t control how your story started, but you can write a few good pages in there

The sky's gone blue: azure, the ocean bluer: cerulean, the trees are swirls of every hella freaking green on earth and bright thick eggy yellow is spilling over everything.

Hope is the confusion of the desire for a thing with its probability.

I am a writer and always was; being a writer is an integral part of my identity. Being published, being well regarded, is a component of that identity.

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke strops our vice.

When Michelangelo was an old man, he drew himself sitting in a child's pushcart.

Our hope is a certainty based on the truths that God is in complete control of our universe and that He loves us.

Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state'... is absolutely essential in a free society.