Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It’s a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door.

I’m an early riser. I get up between five and six, have coffee, and read for a couple of hours before everyone else gets up.

When I wake up, I expect things to be good. If they’re not, then I try to set about trying to make them as good as I can ‚cause I know I’m gonna have to live that day anyway. So why not try to make the most of it if you can? Some days, they pan out a little better than others, but you still gotta always just try.

Just cause you got the monkey off your back doesn’t mean the circus has left town.

Every wall is a door.

Men shut their doors against a setting sun.

When they speak, dead frogs fall out of their mouths.

He was like a cock who thought the sun had risen to hear him crow.

Spend more time in study and prayer. That’s the secret of successful evangelism.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I’d get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

When I say ‚Crush your enemy‘, I don’t literally mean it.

Scientists have to have a metaphor. All scientists start with imagination.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

Reality is a sliding door.

I feel like I just grabbed a big juicy worm with a right sharp hook in the middle of it.

At the end of the day, I pray for the best.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.

In this big ball of people, I’m just one grain of sand on this beach.

When I am working on a book or a story, I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you, and it is cool or cold, and you come to your work and warm as you write.

For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‚If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?‘ And whenever the answer has been ‚No‘ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

A wounded deer leaps the highest.

I hate going to the gym and doing it the old-fashioned way. I hate anything that’s too straightforward, too routine, too familiar. I get bored really, really quickly.

Victory is a fleeting thing in the gambling business. Today’s winners are tomorrow’s blinking toads, dumb beasts with no hope.

It’s just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up.

If you grew up, and you never had a computer, and you’ve never used the Internet, and someone asked you if you wanted to buy a data plan, your response would be ‚What’s a data plan, and why would I want to use this?‘

I do the dishes every night – other people volunteer, but I like the way I do it.

My dad used to have an expression – ‚It is the lucky person who gets up in the morning, puts both feet on the floor, knows what they are about to do, and thinks it still matters.‘

The best way to predict the future is to study the past, or prognosticate.

A correct answer is like an affectionate kiss.

Working out anchors my day.

What happens if you stick at something long enough, and study it for so long, you have a different kind of intelligence. It’s not an intellectual thing. It’s almost like an animal intelligence. I call it our form of instinct, almost how a lion knows exactly where its prey is.

You can tell the tree by the fruit it bears. You see it through what the organization is delivering as far as a concrete program. If the tree’s fruit sours or grows brackish, then the time has come to chop it down – bury it and walk over it and plant new seeds.

The biggest thing is just routine. I think that’s the biggest correlation between golfers and basketball players.

Chance is an element of life. What I try to do is study what I call the mechanics of reality as carefully as I can.

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

Like getting into a bleeding competition with a blood bank.

I’ve been singing Shakira songs in front of my bathroom mirror into my hairbrush forever. It’s like a daily routine.

Ya know what I do almost every day? I wash. Personal hygiene is part of the package with me.

I usually get up at 3 A.M. I don’t require a lot of sleep, and if I get tired, I’ll take a powernap during the day.

The Vietnam War was a great tragedy for our country. And it is now far enough away so that one can study without using the slogans to see what’s really happened.

We become what we repeatedly do.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

I feel 80% of my life is completely normal.

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.

I’ve been known to have a good step or two. I’m half Samoan, you know, and part of our culture is singing and dancing daily.

Being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned.

Part of my daily regime is my glucosamine and, of course, a multitude of multivitamins. Branched-chain amino acids, glutamine, of course protein. I have one protein shake a day, and that is immediately after my training.

Research is creating new knowledge.

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories.

The computer can’t tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what’s missing is the eyebrows.

I’m a day-to-day-type person.

Experience, as a desire for experience, does not come off. We must not study ourselves while having an experience.

O wise man! Give your wealth only to the worthy and never to others. The water of the sea received by the clouds is always sweet.

Study hard so that you can master technology, which allows us to master nature.