“Writing is one of the few careers for which you essentially train yourself, the other two major ones being juggling and pickpocketing.”

“There are two kinds of perfect: The one you can never achieve, and the other, by just being yourself.”

“By remaining constrained in one's environment or country or family, one has little chance of being other than the original prescription. By leaving, one gains a perspective, a distance of both space and time, which is essential for writing about family or home, in any case.”

“One nation, under God, with consciousness – the practical man serves the highest abstraction with juggling training.”

“Learning was of two kinds: the one being the things we learned and knew, and the other being the training that taught us how to find out what we did not know?”

“Always tell yourself that you are as good as anyone that breathes; that you have two hands and a brain, and a little time in which to use them. But they are enough, and no one has any more. And if you train and force them to serve you well, you can reach any height to which you aspire. But to waste any of them is to betray yourself.”