Where was it ever promised us that life on this earth can ever be easy, free from conflict and uncertainty, devoid of anguish and wonder and pain? … The purpose of life is to matter, to be productive, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

Everyone, in some small sacred sanctuary of the self, is nuts.

First-rate people hire first-rate people; second-rate people hire third-rate people.

Money can't buy happiness, but neither can poverty.

If at first you don't succeed, before you try again, stop to figure out what you did wrong.

In the dark colony of night, when I consider man's magnificent capacity for malice, madness, folly, envy, rage, and destructiveness, and I wonder whether we shall not end up as breakfast for newts and polyps, I seem to hear the muffled cries of all the words in all the books with covers closed.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.