I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

See how many are better off than you are, but consider how many are worse.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?

To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That’s why I don’t listen to anything that’s anonymous. But it’s hard; when there’s something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

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

You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.

We are each made for goodness, love and compassion. Our lives are transformed as much as the world is when we live with these truths.

Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

That it will never come again is what makes life sweet.

Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

In business or in life, don’t follow the wagon tracks too closely.

Most of one’s life is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Life is an adventure, it’s not a package tour.

I was a housewife, so I learned to write in times off, and I don’t think I ever gave it up, though there were times when I was very discouraged because I began to see that the stories I was writing were not very good, that I had a lot to learn, and that it was a much, much harder job than I had expected.

I loved writing for kids, I loved talking to children about what I’d written, I don’t want to leave that behind.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

We live in a bewildering world.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.

If everything isn’t black and white, I say, ‚Why the hell not?‘

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

‚Thursday‘ is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

We all want to win more, but it’s all about being blessed and embracing your blessings. We have life.

Nothing is further than earth from heaven, and nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.

I have spent my life going from mania to mania. Somehow it has all paid off.

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.

Life is an unanswered question, but let’s still believe in the dignity and importance of the question.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

Of life’s two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer’s hand.

There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.

Even with all the advantages of retrospect, and a lot of witnesses dead and gone, you can’t make your life look as if you intended it or you were consistent. All you can show is how you dealt with various hands.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

Beauty is all very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has been in the house three days?

Sooner or later we’re all someone’s dog.

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

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

The world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

The life of an uneducated man is as useless as the tail of a dog which neither covers its rear end, nor protects it from the bites of insects.

There comes a time when people get tired of being pushed out of the glittering sunlight of life’s July and left standing amid the piercing chill of an alpine November.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

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

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

Whether or not I like a piece of data has very little bearing on whether or not I am likely to accept it.

The way I define ‚intelligent design‘ is that when people started out, we wanted to make sense of the world we lived in, so we created stories about how things worked.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

We are by nature observers, and thereby learners. That is our permanent state.

The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.

All the time, I’ve felt that life is a wager and that I probably was getting more out of leading a bohemian existence as a writer than I would have if I didn’t.