to achieve unity without uniformity is the whole essence of the democratic way of life.

In childhood the daylight always fails too soon - except when there are going to be fireworks.

For to love, loveless, is a bitter pill:But to be loved, unloving, bitterer still.

swans ... always look as though they'd just been reading their own fan-mail.

Punctuality is the thief of adventure.

[Gardening] is a means by which you can attain many valuable hours of solitude without being thought unsociable.

The worst of gardening is that it's so full of metaphors one hardly knows where to begin.

It's just as important to marry the right life as the right person.

librarianship is one of the few callings in the world for which is it still possible to feel unqualified admiration and respect.

It took me forty years on earth To reach this sure conclusion: There is no Heaven but clarity, No Hell except confusion.

One is what one remembers: no more, no less.

Something that is set can be broken, so are society standards and limits.

After all, hope is a form of planning.

It is pointless to try to make an illusion real

Half the battle is selling music, not singing it. It's the image, not what you sing.

Fatherhood is helping your children learn English as a foreign language.

There's a certain nostalgia and romance in a place you left.

I do think Austin is a great town for writers; we have a lot of them here. But I grew up in Austin, and so I didn't move here because it was a creative mecca; I was just lucky to live here.

No one can argue any longer about the rights of women. It's like arguing about earthquakes.

Art and the saints are the greatest apologetics for our faith.

The [Bernie] Sanders campaign said you might be suppressing the vote by doing this 'cause people in those states might decide to stay home, that their vote doesn't count.