“I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.”

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

All great and precious things are lonely.

Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

Only through immitation do we develop toward originality.

To be alive at all is to have scars.

Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.

It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.

All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.

I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.

Time is the only critic without ambition.

When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you’ve got two new people.

The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.

And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.

Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.

You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.

You chose books, I chose looks . Now see the difference?

You want to remember that while you’re judging the book, the book is also judging you.

When you’re old enough to write a book for children, by then you’ll have become a grown up and have lost all your jokeyness. Unless you’re an undeveloped adult and still have an enormous amount of childishness in you.

If past history was all that is needed to play the game of money, the richest people would be librarians.

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

When I was a child I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I have ever dreamed has come true a thousand times.

The trouble with writing a book about yourself is that you can’t fool around.