Writing is like the relationship with your bowels. First you can, then you can't. Finally, you must. Only then should you reach for the paper.

Nothing in the universe can travel at the speed of light, they say, forgetful of the shadow's speed.

For a Jewish Puritan of the middle class, the novel is serious, the novel is work, the novel is conscientious application why, the novel is practically the retail business all over again.

A teacher is a person who never says anything once.

Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.

I would talk in iambic pentameter if it were easier.

I like all my children, even the squat and ugly ones.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely; and if you surrender your personal responsibility to a government which promises to take care of you, they will only take care of themselves.

When Robert Frost was alive, I was known as the other new England poet, which is to be barely known at all.

Robert Frost had always said you mustn't think of the last line first, or it's only a fake poem, not a real one. I'm inclined to agree.

[T]eaching has been for me an education (Lord knows what it has been for my students).

God is Holy.God is pure.God is faithful.God is gracious.God is merciful.

No one can endure his own solitude.

Be the kind of person that sees an obstacle as a Mountain, and throws on their hiking gear

To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man.

Why administrators are respected and schoolteachers are not: An administrator is paid a lot for doing very little, while a teacher is paid very little for doing a lot.

Alas!-but why Alas? It is the lot of mortality we experience.

What the people now respond - and the goal of those ads is to merely get the name of the medication into the minds of the consumers so that they will ask their doctor about it. That's the whole goal.

Very often, in order to bring about stillness we have to be tirelessly active in the outer world. You might suppose this would agitate the mind. It will not, if it is the dharma.

The promises of higher education and previously enviable credentials have turned into the swindle of fulfillment.

I don't tend to stand still for very long.