moral indignation is a pleasure, often the only pleasure, in many lives. It's also one of the few pleasures people feel obliged to force on other people.

Gloom we have always with us, a rank and sturdy weed, but joy requires tending.

We don't get enough pampering. If we were once the only child of an adoring mother, we developed a taste for it; if not, we developed a thirst for it.

a woman may be called a wife and mother for most of her life, while a man is called a husband and father only at his funeral.

Dogwoods are great optimists. Daffodils wait and see, crouching firmly underground just in case spring doesn't come this year, but dogwoods have faith.

Cats vary so widely that all data is meaningless and the professional classifiers gnash their teeth trying to come up with even a single fact common to all.

True ownership of anything requires time.

New York was where we wanted to live when we were finally grown up, and drink martinis and stay out past bedtime.

There is no 'cat language.' Painful as it is for us to admit, they don't need one!

By and large, people who enjoy teaching animals to roll over will find themselves happier with a dog.

The only people who still read poetry are poets, and they mostly read their own.

A sign of a lover of wisdom is his delight in not running his mouth about things he doesn't know.

So in my uncertainty, I went to graduate school and their it all happened

The pencil of the Holy Ghost hath labored more in describing the afflictions of Job than the felicities of Solomon.

In my opinion, understanding who your target audience is, and what they want, and writing to them (and only them!) is the most important component of being successful as an author.

She glances back before stepping into the alley, and she catches her grandfather looking at her the way he does sometimes--as if she's already gone, as if he's practicing sorrow.

Make time in your life to listen to your own voice. Do not let it get drowned out by others. Your voice is yours and yours alone. Stay in touch with it and use it.

Fortune dreads the brave, and is only terrible to the coward.

Believe it or not, I have about the same success rate as anyone else. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss.

Let those who thoughtfully consider the brevity of life remember the length of eternity.

Music should be able to invoke the natural emotions in all human beings. Music is not notes fixed on apiece of paper.