“Writing is something you’ll never learn in any university or at any school. It’s something that is within you, and if it isn’t there, nothing can put it there.”

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.

I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.

I do much of my creative thinking while golfing. If people know you’re working at home they think nothing of walking in for a cup of coffee, but wouldn’t dream of interrupting on the golf course.

Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?

Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.

Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

Sometimes the Bible in the hands of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.

But before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.

You can’t really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don’t like to do that. Sometimes it’s unpleasant.

You rarely win, but sometimes you do.

She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

I think imparting sex education to children is important.

The best way would be education and kids and all that stuff and then education and working education comes through. Then I started a music school and the music school now teaches kids to play the violin and the viola.

Education has for its object the formation of character.

For all my education, accomplishments, and so called ‘wisdom’… I can’t fathom my own heart.

I could see now that a literary education did not fit one for the popular novelist’s trade.Once you had started using words like flavicomous or acroamatic, because you liked the sound of them, you were lost.

If we have to give up either religion or education, we should give up education.

Classical education has deformed everything, and has imposed upon us as geniuses men of correct, facile talent, who follow the beaten track.

It’s not getting any better for the American people. It seems to be getting worse. That’s predictable; education is a cycle. Stupidity breeds more stupidity.