“You sit down and you do it, and you do it, and you do it, until you have learned to do it.”

The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we’re visiting, life.

Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with, not the social-Darwinist economic ‘libertarianism’ of the far right; but anarchism, as prefigured in early.

You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality.

For all their restlessness, men are who they are; once they put on the man’s toga they will not change again; so they make a virtue of that rigidity and resist whatever might soften it and set them free.

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it… By using words well they strengthen their souls.

To claim power over what you do not understand is not wise, nor is the end of it likely to be good.

I had forgotten how much light there is in the world, till you gave it back to me.

And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul.

What good is music? None … and that is the point. To the world and its states and armies and factories and Leaders, music says, ‘You are irrelevant’; and, arrogant and gentle as a god, to the suffering man it says only, ‘

We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don’t, our lives get made up for us by other people .

While we read a novel, we are insane-bonkers. We believe in the existence of people who aren’t there, we hear their voices… Sanity returns (in most cases) when the book is closed.

Either we will establish an ecological society or society will go under for everyone, irrespective of his or her status.

What is an anarchist? One who, choosing, accepts the responsibility of choice.

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it.

The light is the left hand of darkness.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

If you’re disciplined enough, you don’t get down when you’re behind, and you have a chance to create something positive.

They have a lateral line down their whole body that senses motion, but maybe it does more than that.

When the supply increases, the prices soften. When prices fall, some mines with higher production costs will shut down as they become unviable.

People striving, being knocked down and coming back… this is what builds character in a man.

Even if it’s a long ways down the track, it punches a hole in the air that has to help. When you’re running alone, you can feel the difference, and it shows on the clock, too.

There are some who would like to see the oil rigs removed right down to the ground once their job is done, and there are others, and I count myself among them, who think that once they are in place they begin to be adopted by life in the ocean as a habitat.

You know you’re getting old when you stoop to tie your shoelaces and wonder what else you could do while you’re down there.

Whether it’s make good grades in school, be a good athlete, be a good person, go down and do some community service and help somebody who’s in need, whatever it is you choose to do, you’re investing your time in that.