Anybody who told you to be yourself simply couldn't have given you worse advice.

Ragtime was a fanfare for the 20th century.

Camouflage is a game we all like to play, but our secrets are as surely revealed by what we want to seem to be as by what we want to conceal.

Camouflage is a game we all like to play

No author dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.

It is always well to accept your own shortcomings with candor but to regard those of your friends with polite incredulity.

The true snob never rests; there is always a higher goal to attain, and there are, by the same token, always more and more people to look down upon.

Are you always this stupid or are you making a special effort today?

Tennis is an addiction that once it has truly hooked a man will not let him go.

Brains aren't everything. In fact in your case they're nothing.

If you can't ignore an insult, top it; if you can't top it, laugh it off; and if you can't laugh it off, it's probably deserved.

What sets humans apart from animals is that we have to walk around saying how smart we are, and animals just live their lives.

Alcohol, I had learned, was an eloquent if somewhat inaccurate interpreter. I had placed my trust that December night in glass after glass of it, eager not for drink but for a bit of talk.

It is a strange thing to realize... but our failures so often place us where we need to be.

The difference with me is that I did inhale.

We are like trees. We wear all colors naturally.

Bill Clinton may in fact be moving back into the White House. And coincidentally I'm thinking about moving back into my mother's house.

You cannot lift another soul until you are standing on higher ground than he is. You cannot light a fire in another soul unless it is burning in your own soul.

Yeah, because I think it's more important just to inspire people to wake up one day and pick up a book and start feeling it out for themselves.

Nothing is as fast as the speed of trust.

I could have been a Vincent Young y'all know nothing about. I was on the wrong road, and it was a hard, hard time.