You do it a day at a time. You just put your rejection slips in a shoebox and tell yourself one day you're going to autograph them and sell them at auction.

There's nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.

I used to save all my rejection slips because I told myself, one day I'm going to autograph these and auction them. And then I lost the box.

If there is any human tragedy, there is only one, and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence inside our skin.

The system shaves the dice on the side of those with money and power, and anyone who believes otherwise deserves anything that happens to him.

You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.

And like most middle-aged people who hear the clock ticking in their lives, I had come to resent a waste or theft of my time that was greater than any theft of my goods or money.

How do you explain to yourself the casual manner in which you threw your life away?

...and I wonder if there is any way to adequately describe the folly that causes us to undo all the great gifts of both Earth and Heaven.

When you find the right people, you never let go. The people who count are the ones who are your friends in lean times. You have all the friends you want when things are going well.

That's one of the great advantages of age. You can say, I don't want to, I don't care, you can throw temper tantrums, and nobody minds.

There are several paths to success

The effectiveness of a leader is best judged by the actions of those he guides.

Respectable people do not write music or make love as a career.

A writer helps to show you things you knew but didn't know you knew.

We've imposed a hiring freeze on non-essential federal workers. We've imposed a temporary moratorium on new federal regulations.

I'm a pointillist, just working my tiny little piece of the canvas. I'm not so good at perspective.

His voice was handsome and broken, like a cobblestone street.

He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.

If you ask me if I have this or that principle, tell me what its consequences are, and then I'll tell you whether I have that principle or not.

Cease dependence on inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need for inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.