“Overnight business could go down enough to hurt; yet as a rule it slowly recovered-sometimes it seemed to take forever-went up, not high enough to be really up, only not down.”

Charity you can give even when you haven’t got.

You could not pity anything if you weren’t a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.

Completed, most lives were alike in stages of living-joys, celebrations, crises, illusions, losses, sorrows.

The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.

You write by sitting down and writing. There’s no particular time or place—you suit yourself, your nature.

I don’t think you can do anything for anyone without giving up something of your own.

Comedy, I imagine, is harder to do consistently than tragedy, but I like it spiced in the wine of sadness.

The purpose of freedom is to create it for others.

Some men are by nature explorers; my nature is to stay under the same moon and stars, and if the weather is wet, under the same roof. It’s a strange world, why make it stranger?

There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to go – if there are no doors or windows he walks through a wall.

How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter.

You see in others who you are.

I love metaphor. It provides two loaves where there seems to be one. Sometimes it throws in a load of fish.

It was all those biographies in me yelling, ‘We want out. We want to tell you what we’ve done to you.’

The idea is to get the pencil moving quickly.

To any writer: Teach yourself to work in uncertainty. Many writers are anxious when they begin, or try something new.

If you’re feeling down and times are blue, Remember this and know its true.  Tomorrow you can always start anew. A new day to seize, positivity your virtue.

Isn’t this loneliness a strange poetry? you want everyone to read, but you are never willing to write it down.

The world has slowed down. Its okay if you do too.

She is an all encompassing enigma of beauty and madness don’t attempt to tie her down.

We lock away our secrets and push them deep down so they feel farther away but they will always be inside us, no matter how well we hide the key.

Don’t reorient yourself to fit in to an upside down world.

The only way to bring down her walls is to show her you love her enough to climb over them.

Deep down you always knew.