I could tell you which writer's rhythms I am imitating. It's not exactly plagiarism, it's falling in love with good language and trying to imitate it.

The love of family and the admiration of friends is much more important than wealth and privilege.

When we become a really mature, grown-up, wise society, we will put teachers at the center of the community, where they belong. We don't honor them enough, we don't pay them enough.

It was cold out there, bitter, biting, cutting, piercing, hyperborean, marmoreal cold, and there were all these Minnesotans running around outdoors, happy as lambs in the spring.

Good teachers know how to bring out the best in students.

The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines.

...Pomeranians speak only to Poodles and Poodles speak only to God.

It does no harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn't in flames, that there are people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals.

There are a lot of people who are doing wonderful things, quietly, with no motive of greed, or hostility toward other people, or delusions of superiority.

Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.

The sparrows are preparing for winter, each one dressed in a plain brown coat and singing a cheerful song.

It is our courage which defines us, not our constraints

...and yes that was meant to be interpreted in a sarcastic bubblegum tone complete with clapping and jazz hands.

We must first achieve peace within ourselves. Only then can we take that peace out into the world and invite others to make similar changes.

Landscape painting is the obvious resource of misanthropy.

As an actor you become that lighting rod between the person who made the play and the audience.

I do not think I have any uncharitable prejudice against the rattlesnake, still, I should not like to be one.

A series of accidents creates a positively light-hearted state, out of consideration for this strange power.

I don't mind my work being a record of the time it was written in.

Not that which is inspires the creation, but that which may be; not the actual, but the possible.

Jump blind and you might find yourself on the rim of a raging volcano, or smack in the middle of a battlefield during a savage war, or on a swiftly tilting ice floe in a tempest-tossed sea.