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

One often contradicts an opinion when what is uncongenial is really the tone in which it was conveyed.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

Really, I have to laugh because there was a whole set of stories that made me sound like the Dragon Lady, you know, ‚tough this and tough that.‘ Then there is this business about ‚gooey.‘ The bottom line is I am a pragmatic idealist.

I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

I tried being reasonable, I didn’t like it.

High office teaches decision making, not substance. It consumes intellectual capital; it does not create it. Most high officials leave office with the perceptions and insights with which they entered; they learn how to make decisions but not what decisions to make.

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

I feel like everything we do comes down to how it looks. Even no branding is branding. For example, you had no face or image to put to my music at first. That was branding.

I’ll tell you one thing, since I’m married, single people look absolutely ridiculous to me.

When somewhat at a distance, I cannot hear the high tones of instruments, voices. In speaking, it is not surprising that there are people who have never noticed it, for as a rule I am absent-minded, and they account for it in that way.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can’t see from the center.

I think that I do feel that my nature is to express what this self, this particular self at this time, experiences in the world. And that is so organic – I use this metaphor a lot but I’ll use it again – it’s like a pine tree producing pine cones, or a blackberry bush producing blackberries – it’s just what happens with this being, now.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.

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.

On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

It is normal to give away a little of one’s life in order not to lose it all.

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

There is no unique picture of reality.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

Literature, not scripture, sustains the mind and – since there is no other metaphor – also the soul.

To be honest, I think kids have got a lot more going on than adults. They’ve got their heads screwed on a lot better.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

But to me nothing – the negative, the empty – is exceedingly powerful.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

Science is nothing but perception.

It’s useful to go out of this world and see it from the perspective of another one.

Is it weird in here, or is it just me?

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

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

I can’t think without my glasses.

Who is the wise man? He who sees what’s going to be born.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

Perception often lags behind reality, and I can say from experience that the vast majority of public officials in Louisiana are much better than our reputation holds us to be.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

Life is a series of commas, not periods.