Pleasure is sweetest when 'tis paid for by another's pain.

My hopes are not always realized, but I always hope.

A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.

Quarrels are the dowry which married folk bring one another.

Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.

Make the workmanship surpass the materials.

Love is no assignment for cowards.

Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.

The man who has experienced shipwreck shudders even at a calm sea.

Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.

If you want to be loved, be lovable.

To the extent that we live in a postmodern world and it shapes the concrete circumstances of our daily lives, I would say postmodernism affects my work or influences my work.

There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.

"The Wolfpack" is a real life clash of life and fiction and the saving power of brotherhood and make-believe.

I have observed that as long as one lives and bestirs himself, he can always find food and raiment, though it may not be of the choicest description.

I wanted to write about looking at the world, so it's more about helping people, or persuading people, to see what is around us; both the marvellous and the terrible.

Most Americans don't know enough about basic economics to fill out one fortune cookie.

A collection, for me, is a book of very diverse stories that somehow speak to each other, across wide geography, across time, years, decades.

You can never really predict how people are going to react, what they're going to think about, whether they care.

Measure your mind's height by the shade it casts.

Only the slow reader will notice the odd crowd of images-flier, butcher, seal-which have gathered to comment on the aims and activities of the speeding reader, perhaps like gossips at a wedding.