Mice: But reading all the good writers might discourage you.Y.C.: Then you ought to be discouraged.

I love to write. But it has never gotten any easier to do and you can't expect it to if you keep trying for something better than you can do.

I still need some more healthy rest in order to work at my best. My health is the main capital I have and I want to administer it intelligently.

The more I'm let alone and not worried the better I can function.

It wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg adress was so short. The laws of prose writing are immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics. Fr letter to Maxwell Perkins 1945

Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

Don't let yourself slip and get any perfect characters... keep them people, people, people, and don't let them get to be symbols.

I do not dispute with the world, it is the world that disputes with me. A speaker of Dhamma does not dispute with anyone in the world.

Remember your grandpa’s saying: kill them with kindness.

There was a three-year chunk as a teen where I should have been tranquilized and put in a cage.

I am very bad at drawing. Seriously. I can draw shoes. That's about it.

I don't trust what this life has given me.

Structure is something that calms our nature; we know this of toddlers.

Of course I don't believe in it [pointing to horseshoe on his office wall]. But I understand that it brings you luck whether you believe in it or not.

Enjoy the time you have with your friends & family. That doesn't mean spend money you don't have on them. It means enjoy your time with them.

Most good founders that I know at any given time have a set of small overarching goals for the company that everybody in the company knows.

I can't remember the last time I went to a game and there was a fight. I think they fight more in baseball now than they do in hockey.