I've been trying to garden all my life - it just happens that I haven't had a big garden...until the past few years.

I enjoyed the whole process of learning and was always happy when autumn came and school or college started up again.

All writers behave badly. All people behave badly.

All the people I have written about remain with me - perhaps they are my closest friends.

Everybody is vulnerable through love of their children. Hostages to fortune.

The young Dickens was so alive, so self-confident, so funny.

By the time I went up to Cambridge, I was extremely quiet and well behaved, although I now meet people who remember me as not like that at all.

He saw the world more vividly than other people, and reacted to what he saw with laughter, horror, indignation, and sometimes sobs.

Being himself was more exhausting than impersonating a stage character.

He could take on anything and everything, it seemed, rather than leave himself time to reflect on his dissatisfaction with his life and what he might do about it.

I always try to travel light.

Holy cow, she'd just slept with the hottest guy in the universe. She, the super science geek. The you-go-girl side of her brain wahooed. The rational side of her brain spat out a resounding, Oh shit.

If you have a very strong will to travel, the road will suddenly appear before you!

Maybe if the right person floats into your life, you have to jump in with both feet and try to make it work before the tide turns.

The great secrets of being courted are, to shun others, and seem delighted with yourself.

There's a million ways to make people happy.

But then you begin to understand that the reward of merit is not life’s business.

Independence of my conception means nothing less than the realization of the "Kingdom of God" within you and on this earth.

Dance from here to the other world-and don't stop.

Being in the Marine Corps was the best thing that ever happened to me. It can do a lot for a young guy. I owe a lot to the Marine Corps. If I had a son, I'd want him to be a Marine.

To understand Hitler's power as a speaker, we must consider that he was not just the bellowing tavern demagogue we always picture, but in fact constructed his speeches very deliberately.