“One of the problems with being relatively wealthy if you are a parent is that you cannot provide your children with necessity.”

It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to insist on bending the world to your way, you better have your reasons.

The things that pose the greatest threats to your survival are the most real things.

And if you think tough men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.

If a child has not been taught to behave properly by the age of four, it will forever be difficult for him or her to make friends.

Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word.

In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise. Tell the truth. Or, at least, don’t lie.

You remember the past not so that it is “accurately recorded,” to say it again, but so that you are prepared for the future.

Aristotle defined virtues simply as the ways of behaving that are most conducive to happiness in life.

But we can aim too high. Or too low. Or too chaotically. So we fail and live in disappointment, even when we appear to others to be living well.

It is my firm belief that the best way to fix the world – a handyman’s dream, if ever there was one – is to fix yourself.

Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.

People organize their brains with conversation. If they don’t have anyone to tell their story to, they lose their minds. Like hoarders, they cannot unclutter themselves.

Always place your becoming above your current being.

Question for parents: do you want to make your children safe, or strong?

Dare, instead, to be dangerous. Dare to be truthful. Dare to articulate yourself, and express (or at least become aware of) what would really justify your life.

If society is corrupt, but not the individuals within it, then where did the corruption originate? How is it propagated? It’s a one-sided, deeply ideological theory.

Writing for children is murder. A chapter has to be boiled down to a paragraph. Every word has to count.

No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they’re pretty, even if they aren’t.

All grown-ups were once children but only few of them remember it.

Only the children know what they are looking for.

God wants a child’s heart and a grownup’s head.

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

Is there anything more important than a child?

And I think that’s what life is all about, actually, about children and flowers.