Please don’t ask me to do that which I’ve just said I’m not going to do, because you’re burning up time. The meter is running through the sand on you, and I am now filibustering.

The drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.

Every day I try to be in communication with the universe in an unconscious way.

Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

Adjusting to the passage of time, I think, is a key to success and to life: just being able to roll with the punches.

He who talks more is sooner exhausted.

The best way to resolve any problem in the human world is for all sides to sit down and talk.

Next time I see you, remind me not to talk to you.

I don’t write letters anymore.

Just in terms of allocation of time resources, religion is not very efficient. There’s a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

You have to listen very carefully and tell the truth if you are going to get a paranoid person to open up to you.

Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.

The first time you say something, it’s heard. The second time, it’s recognized, and the third time it’s learned.

I have a little bit of that gamer spirit in me. I just don’t have the time to be a gamer. But in another life, I would be one.

If you do not wish a man to do a thing, you had better get him to talk about it; for the more men talk, the more likely they are to do nothing else.

Occasionally I’ve seen children become heavy-handed and insensitive when dealing with their aging parents, and it only caused resentment and hard feelings.

It is extremely difficult to say how long the process actually took to finally achieve my fragrance, Boudoir, because there was a lot of time waiting around for other people.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

People use irony as a defense mechanism.

He that speaks much, is much mistaken.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

I can have people around a lot more because I’m not always chasing them away so I can work on my novel. My non-novel, I mean.

I exaggerate when I’m angry, but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

Time is bunk.

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

These days, children can text on their cell phone all night long, and no one else is seeing that phone. You don’t know who is calling that child.

Make measurable progress in reasonable time.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.

People who use time wisely spend it on activities that advance their overall purpose in life.

There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.

If you ever go to a music session, you’ll notice that the musicians can sit down and start playing right away, and everyone knows what to do. Of course they’re reading it, but the conductor can tweak little things, and you can take that back to directing motion pictures.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

In order to have friends, you must first be one.

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.

The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.

I was also a junior and I know how you learn from seniors, that’s how you follow. Speeches don’t work.

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

There is no greater index of character so sure as the voice.

I’m blessed to have such a tight-knit family that we can talk about anything. Whether we talk frequently or not, since we’re on separate ends of the country, there are a lot of moving parts, and we always stay tight and find that center ground that keeps us together.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

No one can lie, no one can hide anything, when he looks directly into someone’s eyes.

In the last analysis, what we are communicates far more eloquently than anything we say or do.

When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

Nothing extraordinary happens to a cricketer if you time his career – which is very short.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

I will listen to anyone’s convictions, but pray keep your doubts to yourself.

I can express myself.

We cannot always oblige; but we can always speak obligingly.

A man’s face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man’s thoughts and aspirations.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.