Middle age snuffs out more talent than even wars or sudden death.

Everyone is a bore to someone. That is unimportant. The thing to avoid is being a bore to oneself.

Those who have money think that the most important thing in the world is love. The poor know it is money.

Wisdom is keeping a sense of fallibility of all our views and opinions.

We are closer to the ants than to the butterflies. Very few people can endure much leisure.

In a happy marriage it is the wife who provides the climate, the husband the landscape.

We confess our bad qualities to others out of fear of appearing naive or ridiculous by not being aware of them.

Old age takes away from us what we have inherited and gives us what we have earned.

The only test of work of literature is that it shall please other ages than its own.

Words are as recalcitrant as circus animals, and the unskilled trainer can crack his whip at them in vain.

It is by sitting down to write every morning that he becomes a writer. Those who do not do this remain amateurs.

Because racism exists, and you have to pick a side. You can say that you don’t pick sides, but eventually life will force you to pick a side.

Ma's still nodding. "You're the one who matters, though. Just you." I shake my head till it's wobbling because there's no just me.

When God will punish, hee will first take away the understanding.

First rule of bodyguard detail: know where your 'body' is at all times.

A night of sleep is as much preparation for the subsequent day's activity as it is recovery from that of the previous day.

You may be a redneck if . . . you think you are an entrepreneur because of the "Dirt for Sale" sign in the front yard.

The republican party is my vehicle, not my master.

No one - absolutely no one - is above the law.

I have not tried to reproduce nature; I have represented it.

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.