Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

Doo-wop is special music to me because it’s so straightforward and melody-driven and captures emotions.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

One is lucky to be born in a place where no one is doing it, because then you can say, ‚Well, obviously I can write better than everyone else in high school.‘ You have no idea of the competition.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

I try to read as much as I can. I try to read an informative article every day. I try to stay read up on our world issues.

I never start out with any kind of connecting theme or plan. Everything just falls the way it falls. I don’t ever think about what kind of fiction I write or what I am writing about or what I am trying to write about. When I’m writing, what I do is I think about a story that I want to tell.

I’ve often made revisions at that stage that turned out to be mistakes because I wasn’t really in the rhythm of the story anymore. I see a little bit of writing that doesn’t seem to be doing as much work as it should be doing, and right at the end, I will sort of rev it up. But when I finally read the story again, it seems a bit obtrusive.

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

The happiest people I know as a nation are the Burmese; their brightness and cheeriness are proverbial. Kindness to animals is one of their greatest ‚weaknesses‘; no Burmese will kill an animal, even if it is to put it out of pain.

While working on my first five books, I kept wishing I was writing a novel. I thought until you wrote a novel, you weren’t taken seriously as a writer. It used to trouble me a lot, but nothing troubles me now, and besides, there has been a change. I think short stories are taken more seriously now than they were.

A relationship can give you a gut wrenching feeling sometimes. It’s a real emotional ride.

I have two pairs of reading glasses. One pair is for reading fiction, the other for non-fiction. I’ve read the Bible twice wearing each pair, and it’s the same.

If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy.

There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

The rudiment of verse may, possibly, be found in the spondee.

You can’t be happy by doing something groovy.

Tears of joy are like the summer rain drops pierced by sunbeams.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was ‚Crime and Punishment‘. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days… I said, ‚If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.‘

Marriage and family are ordained of God. The family is the most important social unit in time and in eternity. Under God’s great plan of happiness, families can be sealed in temples and be prepared to return to dwell in His holy presence forever. That is eternal life!

When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

A book has got smell. A new book smells great. An old book smells even better. An old book smells like ancient Egypt.

I’m tall, fat, rather bald, red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice, and wear glasses for reading.

It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

You know, T can stand for anything. T stand for working hard. T stand for loving thy neighbor. T stand for feeding the hungry. T stand for just working, working, working, being happy on the set, you know, lifting everybody’s spirits. T stands for just a nice guy.

All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.

I wouldn’t put myself forward to do a film like ‚Changeling‘ if I thought I couldn’t pull people into a story because of all the other ways people see me.

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

I think I belong to America’s last generation of novelists. Novelists will come one by one from now on, not in seeming families, and will perhaps write only one or two novels, and let it go at that.

Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.

It’s impossible to live a life totally free of feelings. God created all of us to be emotional creatures, and feelings are a big part of our lives.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

Fantasy is uni-age. You can start it in the creche, and it follows you to death.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.

Happiness doesn’t come from being rich, nor merely from being successful in your career, nor by self-indulgence. One step towards happiness is to make yourself healthy and strong while you are a boy so that you can be useful and so you can enjoy life when you are a man.

Hatred is inveterate anger.

I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.

I never saw any of my dad’s stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

People want to know why I do this, why I write such gross stuff. I like to tell them I have the heart of a small boy… and I keep it in a jar on my desk.

Most people are unable to write because they are unable to think, and they are unable to think because they congenitally lack the equipment to do so, just as they congenitally lack the equipment to fly over the moon.

No story is the same to us after a lapse of time; or rather we who read it are no longer the same interpreters.

Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.

Whatever came to mind, whatever came to hand, I would read.

A man will speedily sit down and sympathize with a friend’s griefs, but if he sees him honored and esteemed, he is apt to regard him as a rival and does not so readily rejoice with him. This ought not to be; without effort, we ought to be happy in our brother’s happiness.

God wants to use you to make other people happy! And the happier you make others, the happier you will be because you reap what you sow.

When I write, it’s like choosing which shoes I’m going to put on. More often than not, my lyrics are personal – but I sometimes have to put myself in other people’s shoes.

Our vision and commitment is towards the country’s progress, its place in the world and the happiness of its people.

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

I didn’t have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

Right now I’m just delighted to be alive and to have had a nice long bath.

Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.

I am a professional sportswriter, among other things, and I take the games seriously. It is only one of my many powerful addictions, and I don’t mind admitting any of them.