We are not forced into unpleasant activities. We either allow them to come about or we encourage them to come about.

Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.

If you give to a thief he cannot steal from you, and he is no longer a thief.

My birthplace was California, but I couldn't forget Armenia, so what is one's country? Is it land of the earth, in a specific place? Rivers there? Lakes? The sky there? The way the moon comes up there? And the sun? Is one's country the trees, the vineyards, the grass, the birds, the rocks, the hills and summer and winter? Is it the animal rhythm of the living there? The huts and houses, the streets of cities, the tables and chairs, and the drinking of tea and talking? Is it the peach ripening in summer heat on the bough? Is it the dead in the earth there?

Two years ago your father died, Ulysses. But as long as we are alive, as long as we are together, as long as two of us are left, and remember him, nothing in the world can take him from us.

No city invites the heart to come to life as San Francisco does. Arrival in San Francisco is an experience in living.

Even after you've won fame and fortune, every time you write you've got to write, there's no shortcut, you have to start your career all over again.