Expose a child to a particular environment at this susceptible time and he will perceive in the shapes of that environment until he dies.

You achieve stature only by being good enough to deserve it, by forcing even the contemptuous and indifferent to pay attention, and to acknowledge that human relations and human emotions are of inexhaustible interest wherever they occur.

I balked at nothing, I was above nothing. Everything had something to teach me.

The meeting of writer and reader is an intimate act, and it properly takes place in private.

[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.

It is love and friendship, the sanctity and celebration of our relationships, that not only support a good life, but create one. Through friendships, we spark and inspire one another's ambitions.

If we don't know where we are, we don't know who we are.