I write for myself things that I’ve gone through.

I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It’s embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness.

Taste is the only morality. Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.

Man’s task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.

In college, I think I probably positioned myself as an aspiring writer, meaning I dressed sort of extravagantly and adopted all the semi-Byronic affectations, as if I were writing, although I wasn’t actually doing any writing.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it’s a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can’t separate persona from psyche; you just can’t do it.

Having a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing seems to me to be one of the most basic principles that you can adopt to contribute to individual and world peace.

When I see myself as an old woman, I just think about being happy. And hopefully, I’ll still be fly.

Over the years I’ve learned how to lock myself up in a prison of hope, knowing that God has nothing but His best planned for me. He promised me things concerning my ministry and my life.

When I was young, I could not imagine being old. My mother said, and the doctor confirmed, that I had an unusual amount of energy; and it followed me into young adulthood.

When I did A Soldier’s Story, I was very young and green and thought I knew everything-now I know I know everything!

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

I can be a cruel person.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them bloom?

I learn poetry, learn text, and that really keeps you alive.

America’s experience, like many others, teaches us that fostering entrepreneurship is not just about crafting the right economic policy or developing the best educated curricula. It’s about creating an entire climate in which innovation and ideas flourish.

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

I’m not a god – I do bad things.

Sometimes I catch myself stooping, and whenever I am like that, I am sure something is not quite right.

Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

Just try new things. Don’t be afraid. Step out of your comfort zones and soar, all right?

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

Once I’ve written something it does tend to run away from me. I don’t seem to have any part of it – it’s no longer my piece of writing.

For some reason I did something where I realized I could get a reaction. That was when I broke out of my shell at school, because I really didn’t have any friends or anything like that and I just kind of was going along, and then finally I did this zany thing, and all of a sudden I had tons of friends.

I want to look my best for God. So many people have the attitude that if you’re a Christian you’ve got to dress bad, wear an old color, not do anything to your hair, have nothing. It’s no wonder that Christianity is not very attractive. I mean, how many people do you know in a Western culture that’s going to go, ‚Yeah, give me some of that?‘

The happiest part of a man’s life is what he passes lying awake in bed in the morning.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.

A song is anything that can walk by itself.

I thought I would be a guy on the radio.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up.

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!

To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.

Marriage destroyed my relationship with two wonderful men.

Before you start some work, always ask yourself three questions – Why am I doing it, What the results might be and Will I be successful. Only when you think deeply and find satisfactory answers to these questions, go ahead.

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

I started out as a poet. I’ve always been a poet since I was 7 or 8. And so I feel myself to be fundamentally a poet who got into writing novels.

If you want to go somewhere, it is best to find someone who has already been there.

If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation.

Writing’s just as natural to me as getting up and cooking breakfast.

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

You don’t have the same mentality as you did five years ago – even one year. People are always changing, and I believe that everyone deserves the space to change and for people to recognize their change.

The value of beauty and inspiration is very much underrated, no question. But I want to be clear: I’m not trying to be anyone’s savior. I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

You’ll never get ahead of anyone as long as you try to get even with him.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.