“Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.”

My objectives are very limited. I want to do the best I can with the talent God gave me. I hope to goodness that every novel I do gets better and better, not worse and worse.

Rest assured, as long as I am alive any book purporting to be with my cooperation is a falsehood.

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

Sometimes it’s better to bend the law a little in special cases.

Things are always better in the morning.

With him, life was routine; without him, life was unbearable.

Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women – black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.

As a reader I loathe introductions…Introductions inhibit pleasure, they kill the joy of anticipation, they frustrate curiosity.

Ladies pick funny things to be proud of.

I’m still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries.

As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don’t think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, ‘I’m probably no better than you, but I’m certainly your equal.

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Things are never as bad as they seem.

We’re paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.

Laughter is the best medicine, y’know, besides medicine.

I just hope I can get another personal best. If I can do that, I’ll be satisfied.

Those who stay will be champions

Things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a best friend.

The best birthday present I ever got was born 10 minutes before I was.

Hope for the best, survive the worst, find humor wherever you can.

Science is the best thing humans beings have ever come up with. And if it isn’t, science will fix it.

The best verse hasn’t been rhymed yet, The best house hasn’t been planned, The highest peak hasn’t been climbed yet, The mightiest rivers aren’t spanned.