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

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

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

Devon holds a special place in my heart. As a child, I normally went on holiday to Bantham and have lots of happy memories from my time there. I used to catch sand eels in the early morning and go fishing for bass throughout the day. I remember a gull taking my bait.

William Maxwell’s my favorite North American writer, I think. And an Irish writer who used to write for ‚The New Yorker‘ called Maeve Brennan, and Mary Lavin, another Irish writer. There were a lot of writers that I found in ‚The New Yorker‘ in the Fifties who wrote about the same type of material I did – about emotions and places.

I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.

I’ve never thought about songwriting as a weapon. I’ve only thought about it as a way to help me get through love and loss and sadness and loneliness and growing up.

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

When hiring somebody, I never ask to see a curriculum vitae. I feel that since I didn’t have one myself, it would be a bit presumptuous to ask to see anyone else’s.

My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.

I think I have the nicest fans in the world, and I quite like being surrounded by people if we’re all feeling the same emotion in the same room.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.

Love is a serious mental disease.

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

I need more sex, OK? Before I die I wanna taste everyone in the world.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

And so you touch this limit, something happens and you suddenly can go a little bit further. With your mind power, your determination, your instinct, and the experience as well, you can fly very high.

It could be if I fight in front of one person or one million people. It’s still the same emotions.

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.

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

Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.

Sometimes you can’t prioritise family and you feel guilty.

Don’t get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.

I really believed that fear is contagious.

Anything I’ve ever said, I certainly was feeling at the time.

I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

Boys do cry, but I don’t think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

When all the routines and details and the human bores get on our nerves, we just yearn to go away from here to somewhere else. To go fishing is a sound, a valid, and an accepted reason for an escape. It requires no explanation.

I feel, as a songwriter, it’s one of the hardest things to do – to sit down and say how you feel.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

The reward of suffering is experience.

People like music when they’re in love, but they don’t need it as much. You need music when you’re missing someone or you’re pining for someone or you’re forgetting someone or you’re trying to process what just happened.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

My relationship with the mountains actually started when I was 16. Every year, a group used to be taken from Auckland Grammar down to the Tangariro National Park for a skiing holiday.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

It’s not possible to stop love.

It is impossible for you to be angry and laugh at the same time. Anger and laughter are mutually exclusive and you have the power to choose either.

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.

I did 20 years in the Navy. I joined the Navy right out of high school and went through Navy boot camp, went to SEAL training, got done with that, and then showed up at a SEAL team, where I did 20 years. That was pretty much my whole adult life.

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

When you are young you tend to do so many things that are not needed. When you get experience, you know what exactly what works for you and you tend to do things that you want.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

Hatred is an affair of the heart; contempt that of the head.

An identity would seem to be arrived at by the way in which the person faces and uses his experience.

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

I hate smiling. It makes me feel weak and powerless and small. I’ve always been like that; I don’t smile in any pictures.

Flying might not be all plain sailing, but the fun of it is worth the price.