“A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune”

Civilization begins with distillation

The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.

The most important thing is insight, that is to be – curious – to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does.

Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.

Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain’t got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

Life is a process of preparing to be dead for a long time.

If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.

The ideal woman which is in every man’s mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand.

It seems hard that a man in his need could be so flouted by a road.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.

Truth; that long clean clear simple undeniable unchallengeable straight and shining line, on one side of which black is black and on the other white is white, has now become an angle, a point of view.

The next time you try to seduce anyone, don’t do it with talk, with words.

The quality an artist must have is objectivity in judging his work, plus the honesty and courage not to kid himself about it.

I only write when I feel the inspiration. Fortunately, inspiration strikes at 10:00 o’clock every day.

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.

Every day, parents and teachers ask me, ‘How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?’ The honest answer is, I don’t know.

People attain worth and dignity by the multitude of decisions they make from day to day.

I suppose, used a different language or a different etiquette, but ultimately, these are still people that loved and breathed and lived and ate and weed and pooed just like we do now.

The only thing my husband and I have in common is that we were married on the same day.

I don’t know any other way to live but to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me.

While day by day the overzealous student stores up facts for future use.

The solitude of writing is also quite frightening. It’s quite close to madness, one just disappears for a day and loses touch.

When I first found out I had HIV, I had to find somebody who was living with it, who could help me understand my journey and what I was going to have to deal with day-to-day.