A guest at a dinner party observed the strange expression on James Thurber's face. 'Don't be concerned,' said Thurber's wife. 'He's writing.'

... where do they go when they die? We hear of the elephant graveyards, where the elephants go to die, but how much more curious it is that birds are not falling out of the sky all the time, on our heads, at our feet, dying and falling and flopping to the ground. I rarely see a dead bird on the ground.

Where do you put your attention? On fear or love? I wish the choice were made just once and not repeated every moment of the day.

Prayer is a law of the universe, like gravity. You don't even have to believe in God to ask.

Angels come in all sizes and shapes and colors, visible and invisible to the physical eye. But always you are changed from having seen one.

It is said that angels come as thoughts, as visions, as dreams, as animals, as the light on the water or in clouds and rainbows, and as people too. Are they walking on this earth as people in disguise? Or do they appear for that one moment and vanish into ether again? Or is it really us, mere humans, who for a moment are picked up by the hand of God and made to speak unwittingly the words another needs to hear, or to hold out a life line to another soul?

There are so many different kinds of writing and so many ways to work that the only rule is this: do what works. Almost everything has been tried and found to succeed for somebody. The methods, even the ideas of successful writers contradict each other in a most heartening way, and the only element I find common to all successful writers is persistence-an overwhelming determination to succeed.