“The human mind prefers to be spoon-fed with the thoughts of others, but deprived of such nourishment it will, reluctantly, begin to think for itself – and such thinking, remember, is original thinking and may have valuable results.”

One is alone when the last one who remembers is gone.

The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes.

I’m sure you have a theme: the theme of your life. You can embellish it or desecrate it, but it’s your theme, and as long as you follow it, you will experience harmony and peace of mind.

Don’t think. That is the wrong way to bring anything back. Let it go. Sooner or later it will flash into your mind.

It’s what’s in *yourself* that makes you happy or unhappy.

To win a war is as disasterous as to lose one.

Everything that has existed, lingers in the Eternity.

There is no greater mistake in life than seeing things or hearing them at the wrong time.

You don’t realize what fine fighting material there is in age. You show me any one who’s lived to over seventy and you show me a fighter – someone who’s got the will to live.

Assumptions are dangerous things.

But surely for everything you love you have to pay some price.

To every problem, there is a most simple solution.

Until one looks back on one’s own past one fails to realise what an extraordinary view of the world a child has.

The simplest explanation is always the most likely.

Fiction is founded on truth unless things did happen, people couldn’t think of them.

There are questions that you don’t ask because you’re afraid of the answers to them.

All begins with you surrounding yourself with the right people—the good and authentic people—and unsurrounding yourself with the wrong people. And we both know there are plenty of wrong people in this world.

For that which is without a beginning, a final cause need not be sought.

There is no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no causes, no effects. What we love in our books are the depths of many marvelous moments seen all at one time.

And so began one of the most exciting periods of my life, the time of discovery.

We began to talk about one’s faith and the storm.

Political promises are much like marriage vows. They are made at the beginning of the relationship between candidate and voter, but are quickly forgotten.

If you do different, you will have different. If you begin to require more of yourself, that in and of itself is different.

When you finally let go peace begins to flow.