“It’s not going to do any good to land on Mars if we’re stupid.”

Don’t worry about things. Don’t push. Just do your work and you’ll survive. The important thing is to have a ball, to be joyful, to be loving and to be explosive. Out of that comes everything and you grow.

Learning to let go should be learned before learning to get. Life should be touched, not strangled.

We are the miracle of force and matter making itself over into imagination and will. Incredible. The Life Force experimenting with forms. You for one. Me for another. The Universe has shouted itself alive. We are one of the shouts.

Teachers are to inspire; librarians are to fulfill.

Write a short story every week. It’s not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.

If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.

I don’t think the robots are taking over. I think the men who play with toys have taken over. And if we don’t take the toys out of their hands, we’re fools.

That’s the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.

Writing is not a serious business. It’s a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun with it.

Work is the only answer. I have three rules to live by. One, get your work done. If that doesn’t work, shut up and drink your gin. And when all else fails, run like hell!

Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.

We are the witnesses to the miracle. We are put here by creation, by God….We’re here to be the audience to the magnificent. It is our job to celebrate.

Your intuition knows what to write, so get out of the way.

Treasure this day and Treasure yourself, truly, neither will ever happen again.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

How working for the wrong motives poisons our creativity and warps our ideas of success and failure.

A word in earnest is as good as a speech.

Music is the only religion that delivers the goods.

When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It’s not enough, but it helps.

I’ve had extraordinary good luck with my health, other than a broken elbow.

The world suffers a lot. Not because the violence of bad people. But because of the silence of the good people.

Once I realized the value of making people laugh, I got very good at it. Fast.

It is part of a good man to do great and noble deeds, though he risks everything.

Let France have good mothers, and she will have good sons.