Get the big truth first. If you get the big truth, the small truths will accumulate around it.

...if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer. It means you are so busy keeping one eye on the commercial market, or one ear peeled for the avant-garde coterie, that you are not being yourself. You don't even know yourself. For the first thing a writer should be is-- excited. He should be a thing of fevers and enthusiasms.

Looking back over a lifetime, you see that love was the answer to everything.

If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.

They stood there, King of the Hill, Top of the Heap, Ruler of All They Surveyed, Unimpeachable Monarchs and Presidents, trying to understand what it meant to own a world and how big a world really was.

First of all, it was October, a rare month for boys.

That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.