Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

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.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

You can’t talk your way out of problems you behave yourself into.

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.

The only difference between the sane and the insane is that the sane have the power to lock up the insane.

As a rule, men worry more about what they can’t see than about what they can.

When the dog looks at you, the dog is not thinking what kind of a person you are. The dog is not judging you.

When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

There’s nothing better than having a baby. I’ve always loved children. I used to work summers at the YMCA and be in charge of, like, 30 preschool kids. I knew that when I had a child, I’d be overwhelmed, and it’s true… I can’t tell you how much my attitude has changed since we’ve got Frances. Holding my baby is the best drug in the world.

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

Love is the one wild card.

A man’s delight in looking forward to and hoping for some particular satisfaction is a part of the pleasure flowing out of it, enjoyed in advance. But this is afterward deducted, for the more we look forward to anything the less we enjoy it when it comes.

It is only at the first encounter that a face makes its full impression on us.

I’m an emotional person.

I didn’t mean to hit the umpire with the dirt, but I did mean to hit that bastard in the stands.

Frank and explicit – that is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and confuse the minds of others.

People take the little bit of information they’re fed, and they draw a picture of who you are. Most of the time, it’s wrong.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

I think I hate cynicism more than anything else. It’s the curse of our age, and I want to avoid it at all costs.

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

I’m an emotional person. Sometimes I can’t help it.

The infinite faith I have in people’s ability to understand anything that makes sense has always been justified, finally, by their behavior.

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

I have no human feelings.

No, I’m not anguished and tormented.

Fear is real, but so is love.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

The special ops guys and the firefighters around the world have this great phrase. They say, ‚Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast,‘ and that is true. Everything I’ve accomplished in my life has been because of that attitude.

For people who may think they know, or have snippets of who I am, you can attack that person. That’s part of being a public figure.

Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.

Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.

May we so love as never to have occasion to repent of our love!

We are not angry with people we fear or respect, as long as we fear or respect them; you cannot be afraid of a person and also at the same time angry with him.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

I have to be seen to be believed.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

You know how big love is? Love is big. love can hold anger; love can even hold hatred.

Quarrel? Nonsense; we have not quarreled. If one is not to get into a rage sometimes, what is the good of being friends?

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won’t last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don’t realise that.

Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings – always darker, emptier and simpler.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

Only those who want everything done for them are bored.

Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything – to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby?

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

The outside perception and inside perception of Microsoft are so different. The view of Microsoft inside Microsoft is always kind of an underdog thing.

I’m quite a chauvinistic person.

Real joy seems to me almost as unlike security or prosperity as it is unlike agony.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.