“The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.”

“A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood. The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved.”

“Anybody who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.”

“I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.”

“Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable.”

“I came to believe it not true that "the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man only one." I think it is the other way around: It is the brave who die a thousand deaths.For it is imagination, and not just conscience, which doth make cowards of us all. Those who do not know fear are not truly brave.”

“The purpose of life is not to be happy—but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.”