Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

Love is the answer to everything. It’s the only reason to do anything. If you don’t write stories you love, you’ll never make it. If you don’t write stories that other people love, you’ll never make it.

I have been – I have spoken in Bir Zeit a number of times.

It’s an awful feeling to write something that you feel is really important… and to feel that you’re being published by people who really don’t get it and/or don’t really care.

There are two kinds of teachers: the kind that fill you with so much quail shot that you can’t move, and the kind that just gives you a little prod behind and you jump to the skies.

Through my education, I didn’t just develop skills, I didn’t just develop the ability to learn, but I developed confidence.

The pursuit, even of the best things, ought to be calm and tranquil.

On Sundays when I speak, I hopefully give somebody something that they can use the next day at work or at home.

Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.

Confidence comes from discipline and training.

Never do things others can do and will do if there are things others cannot do or will not do.

I don’t want to look sloppy, because then I feel sloppy.

Just remember, you can’t climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets.

How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone.

The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.

What is the use of writing plays, what is the use of writing anything, if there is not a will which finally moulds chaos itself into a race of gods.

I like to complain and do nothing to make things better.

I believe that in the pursuit of education, individual desire is more influential than institution, and personal faith more forceful than faculty.

There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.

If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.

I am still far from being what I want to be, but with God’s help I shall succeed.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Crowded classrooms and half-day sessions are a tragic waste of our greatest national resource – the minds of our children.

Creationists make it sound as though a ‚theory‘ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books.

The men I idolized built their bodies and became somebody – like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger – and I thought, ‚That can be me.‘ So I started working out. The funny thing is I didn’t realize back then that I was having a defining moment.

The first real thought that I had of something that I might do was to write for car magazines, because I always had a car thing.

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

My father was a great sympathizer of Ahad Ha’am. Every Friday night we would read Hebrew together, and often the reading was Ahad Ha’am’s essays.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

There are people in the world who have skills and strength and talent that I will never have. Never. These notions that you can ‚be whatever you want to be as long as you want it bad enough‘ are not true. They are fairy tales.

I don’t care if people I admire criticize me because their opinion is valuable to me.

The United States never lost a war or won a conference.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

If it’s all instruction, you get annoyed with it and bored, and you stop reading. If it’s all entertainment, you read it quite quickly, your heart going pitty-pat, pitty-pat. But when you finish, that’s it. You’re not going to think about it much afterward, apart from the odd nightmare. You’re not going to read that book again.

Transformation literally means going beyond your form.

I think as long as I do a good job and put in all my effort to proving that I’m worth it, then everything should be fine.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

Don’t ever play yourself.

If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.

I was a class clown. At 12, I was definitely clowning. I was making all the jokes. But I was smart, so the teachers didn’t know what to do with me.

When schools flourish, all flourishes.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO.

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated.

The bulk of the universities are about teaching kids.

I have the conviction that excessive literary production is a social offence.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

I always believe that there should come a time when your energy, speed, stamina should combine well with your brains.

If four things are followed – having a great aim, acquiring knowledge, hard work, and perseverance – then anything can be achieved.

To be a monk is to have time to practice for your transformation and healing. And after that to help with the transformation and healing of other people.

The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life. It should be something useful, something good.

You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.

Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know.

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.