Probably the most honest "self-made person" ever was the one we heard say: "I got to the top the hard way - fighting my own laziness and ignorance every step of the way."

If there is a rumor in the air about you, you'd better treat it as you would a wasp: either ignore it or kill it with the first blow. Anything else will just stir it up.

For every time we regret keeping still, there are about ten times we regret speaking up.

Too often we seek justice for just us.

Whether a character in your novel is full of choler, bile, phlegm, blood or plain old buffalo chips, the fire of life is in there, too, as long as that character lives.

Aphorism, n.: A concise, clever statement you don’t think of until too late.

We pick bygone time up by the handfuls and, like clay, see if it feels right and then form it into stories about the past.