To be an inventor, you have to be willing to live with a sense of uncertainty, to work in this darkness and grope towards an answer, to put up with anxiety about whether there is an answer.

You have to have the will not to jump at the first solution, because the really elegant solution might be right around the corner.

I think a lot of developments start with the desire of the developer to get what he really wants so that he can use it. It's not just the technical fascination or the business opportunity.

Inventing is a skill that some people have and some people don't. But you can learn how to invent.

Lovers have no primary needs

The poor who commit murder, rape and robbery are not only not starving, they have far more material things than the word ‘poverty’ suggests.

Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats.

The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches. When you reach the line which marks that drop - for convenience, the one hundredth meridian - you have reached the West.

In my view, one of the major reasons that we have so many people in jail is that we have turned our backs on a lot young people.

If we are wise, we never leave school.

The heart grows brutal feeding on fantasies.

I was never able to write seriously about heroes because I was very aware that I was not one and that in my background there was not this heroic thing.

I love young men, lots of them, your ancient masculine double standard.

I think slavery was an awful, awful period in our history, but when I look at what's become of black culture since emancipation, I think you have to admit, maybe the Confederacy was on to something