For me the initial delight is in the surprise of remembering something I didn't know I knew. I have never started a poem yet whose end I knew.

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

By working faithfully eight hours a day you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.

The best way out is always through.

Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep, and miles to go before I sleep.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

Live life like its the last breath you take for that breath is the whole essence of living, the little things in life are what connects us to all the big things we live for

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman's birthday but never remembers her age.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know what I was walling in or walling out.

The only thing worth thinking about, when I write a story, is whether I like it, whether I want to write it, whether it excites me.

In the space age the most important space is between the ears.

I think happiness is what makes you pretty.

Beyond the parameters of the self is an ocean ... and it's most excellent.

Most mainstream male fiction is littered with heroines, and female characters are basically so great, you want to fall in love with them.

I think that's something that Oprah [Winfrey] and Ava [ DuVernay] do seamlessly. They know how to connect to people and they know how to share our stories. To be a part of that is a blessing.

I had a 20-year, stellar government career.

I didn't feel up to writing about 9/11. If I were to write about it, it would take me years.

We are only geometricians of matter; the Greeks were, first of all, geometricians in the apprenticeship to virtue.