“The thing about inspiration is that it takes your mind off everything else.”

I don’t pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

To not be able to love the one you love is to have your life wrenched away.

The past is the past, and he can’t make amends, only hope that the gain will outlast the damage.

I spent many years of my life as an economist and demographer. I was finally distracted by writing my novels and poetry. I’m enormously happy that was the case. I feel that with writing I have found my metier.

In life’s brief game to be a winner A man must have; oh yes, above All else, of course, someone to love.

I’m not sure anyone can understand a whole life, even their own.

Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.

I sometimes seem to myself to wander around the world merely accumulating material for future nostalgias.

Quietly they moved down the calm and sacred river that had come down to earth so that its waters might flow over the ashes of those long dead, and that would continue to flow long after the human race had, through hatred and knowledge, burned itself out.

I think it’s possible to be multi-rooted, rather like a banyan tree, without being deracinated.

Man without life companion is either god or beast.

I don’t think anyone should be banned. If you don’t like a book, set it aside.

Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.

I have a reputation for being hermitlike. I’m not. I’m just obsessed with my work.

I need my natural laziness to be counteracted by obsession in order to do anything.

Good books get praised, bad books get praised. Good books get ignored, bad books get ignored.

You get one life. Live it in a way that it inspires someone.

Begin with the end in mind.

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us.

Share your story with someone. You never know how one sentence of your life story could inspire someone to rewrite their own.

The biggest risk a person can take is to do nothing.

You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.

I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.