The novelist screws up his courage in order to invest another two or three years in another attempt to float a boat of original design upon an invented ocean.

In order to really enjoy a dog, one doesn't merely try to train him to be semi-human. The point of it is to open oneself to the possibility of becoming partly a dog.

There aren't many irritations to match the condescension which a woman metes out to a man who she believes has loved her vainly for the past umpteen years.

Men often compete with one another until the day they die. Comradeship consists of rubbing shoulders jocularly with a competitor.

True solitude is a din of birdsong, seething leaves, whirling colors, or a clamor of tracks in the snow.

The question of whether it's God's green earth is not at center stage, except in the sense that if so, one is reminded with some regularity that He may be dying.

Animals are stylized characters in a kind of old saga - stylized because even the most acute of them have little leeway as they play out their parts.

Silence is exhilarating at first - as noise is - but there is a sweetness to silence outlasting exhilaration, akin to the sweetness of listening and the velvet of sleep.

Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run.

If two people are in love they can sleep on the blade of a knife.

Many people have believed that they were Chosen, but none more baldly than the Texans.

The hardest thing about being a writer is convincing your wife that lying on the sofa is work.

Once you love something, you always love it in someway. You have to. it's like, part of you for good.

I am positive that flexibility is a feminine characteristic.

It is easier for me to have faith in the Bible than to have faith in D.L. Moody, for Moody has failed me lots of times.

In all honesty, titles are an embarrassment to me.

The difference between rich and poor is becoming more extreme, and as income inequality widens the wealth gap in major nations, education, health and social mobility are all threatened.

The stock market has an insidious effect on C.E.O.s' moods, because of its impact not just on their companies but on their own bank accounts.

As Miss America, my goal is to bring peace to the entire world and then get my own apartment.

The best conversation with Stanley Kubrick is a silent one: you sit in a theatre and watch his films and you learn so much.

In motion alone is the answer to all of the mysteries of matter.