Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught.

The time to relax is when you don't have time for it.

If the devil could be persuaded to write a bible, he would title it, "You Only Live Once."

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.

It is not only useless, it is harmful, to believe in oneself until one truly knows oneself. And to know oneself means to accept our moments of insanity, of eccentricity, of childishness and blindness.

Elitism is the slur directed at merit by mediocrity.

Norbert Blei is a writer the way people used to be troubadours and minstrels, celebrating what he has seen and heart and felt in a deceptively simple style reminiscent of the early Sherwood Anderson. . . . Like Anderson, he is a lover, and his affection invests his writing with a singular charm.