When in doubt, look intelligent.

Take care of your friends. Because there will come a time when you'll be no good to anyone, and the only reason for people to talk to you will be sheer habit.

A person cannot coast along in old destructive habits year after year and accept whatever comes along. A person must stand up on her own two legs and walk. Get off the bus and go get on another. Climb out of the ditch and cross the road. Find the road that s where you want to go. ... The only sermon that counts is the one that is formed by our actions. She would quit drinking and thereby show Kyle life is what you make it. A person can grab hold of her life and change things for the better. This happens all the time. We are not chips of wood drifting down the stream of time. We have oars.

Second violins can play a concerto perfectly if they're in their own home and nobody's there.

I hear a little firecracker go off when you come up with a good rhyme.

You learn this great lesson of life: it's not about me. It's just not. The matter of talent-which seemed so important to you when you were young-is not of great importance. We're simply a conduit. We take things out of the air into us and put them in the form of stories. That's pretty much it.

One reads books in order to gain the privilege of living more than one life. People who don't read are trapped in a mine shaft, even if they think the sun is shining.