Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we’d all love one another.

Every wall is a door.

Ultimately, who you choose to be in a relationship with and what you do in your bedroom is your business.

I don’t understand why or how we can bully each other.

Youth is wasted on the young.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.

I’m convinced of this: Good done anywhere is good done everywhere. For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they’re stones that don’t matter. As long as you’re breathing, it’s never too late to do some good.

I bought a gun and chose drugs instead.

I don’t have this feeling that 70 is really old.

Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another?

Sitting on a bedroom floor crying is something that makes you feel really alone. If someone’s singing about that feeling, you feel bonded to that person.

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

Applause is a receipt, not a bill.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

God reigns when we take a liberal view, when a liberal view is presented to us.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

One of the things I’ve never been accused of is not caring about people.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

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

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

There can be no better grounding for a lifetime as an author than to see humanity in all its various guises through the lens of the reporter for the town.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.

Go to foreign countries and you will get to know the good things one possesses at home.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

People who think you could wave a magic wand and the legacy of the past will be over are blind.

You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

Be nice to the whites, they need you to rediscover their humanity.

Life’s a bit like mountaineering – never look down.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

Listen with your eyes for feelings.

Instead of judging people, we need to pray.

I’ve been trying to… Having been an English literary graduate, I’ve been trying to avoid the idea of doing art ever since. I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

The funny thing is that I feel close to all my characters. Deep, deep inside them all.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don’t think anybody has held this job who hasn’t felt personally responsible for those being killed.

The things I talk about and explain couldn’t happen – yet, they don’t seem impossible – you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane – and it’s trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is.

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.

You have to understand that people that are hurting are going to criticize.

I do not like the man who squanders life for fame; give me the man who living makes a name.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.