We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

I believe in having fun first, and along the way, if you teach people, if you influence people, well and good.

Stuff your eyes with wonder.

He knew what the wind was doing to them, where it was taking them, to all the secret places that were never so secret again in life.

Writing can be described in two verbs: Throw up and clean up.

But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.

Forgive, I hope you won't be upset, but when I was a boy I used to look up and see you behind your desk, so near but far away, and, how can I say this, I used to think that you were Mrs. God, and that the library was a whole world, and that no matter what part of the world or what people or thing I wanted to see and read, you'd find and give it to me.