“Truth; that long clean clear simple undeniable unchallengeable straight and shining line, on one side of which black is black and on the other white is white, has now become an angle, a point of view.”

The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

Whatever its symbol – cross or crescent or whatever – that symbol is man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race.

Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death.

The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.

The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends.

No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

Perhaps they were right putting love into books. Perhaps it could not live anywhere else.

If we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don’t deserve to survive, and probably won’t.

Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.

The writer’s only responsibility is to his art.

Our most treasured family heirloom are our sweet family memories.

One of the saddest things is that the only thing that a man can do for eight hours a day, day after day, is work. You can’t eat…nor make love for eight hours…

A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you’d think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune

Plus, I’ll be the goal line guy. If I’m not wearing a boot.

No one who has experienced facing a screaming, boiling, hysterical audience can avoid feeling shivers in the spine. It’s a thin line between celebration and menace.

Are you kidding me?’ But we’re always saying that what matters about the courts – the lines, the nets – are the same. I’m practicing in Poland even when I don’t have good facilities.

I grew up without a lot of money and my parents grew up with far less money. And that’s kept me in line. Really in line.

I admire many women that have come before me, heavy influencers such as Oprah, such as Beyoncé, and I’m witnessing the fruit of their work and experiencing their legacy now and they’re not even close to the finish line.

I love laugh lines. It means you’ve had a good life.

Christianity is not a cafeteria line where you say, “I’ll have a little salvation, but no Lordship right now.

I am always interested in the ways of scoring the sound of the poem, especially a poem with long lines.