Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with that there is

I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.

Now, being in Africa, I was hungry for more of it, the changes of the seasons, the rains with no need to travel, the discomforts that you paid to make it real, the names of the trees, of the small animals, and all the birds, to know the language and have time to be in it and to move slowly.

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer? Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

There are worse places to be than on your own.

Now he would never write the things that he had saved to write until he knew enough to write them well. Well, he would not have to fail at trying to write them either. Maybe you could never write them, and that was why you put them off and delayed the starting. Well he would never know, now.