“Any fool can write, we start learning it at school at the age of three....”

“When asked "What do we need to learn this for?" any high-school teacher can confidently answer that, regardless of the subject, the knowledge will come in handy once the student hits middle age and starts working crossword puzzles in order to stave off the terrible loneliness.”

“I learned from the age of two or three that any room in our house, at any time of day, was there to read in, or be read to.”

“Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in that.”

“Any fool can write a book and most of them are doing it; but it takes brains to build a house.”

“At any rate, that’s how I started running. Thirty three—that’s how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a young man. The age that Jesus Christ died. The age that Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill. That age may be a kind of crossroads in life. That was the age when I began my life as a runner, and it was my belated, but real, starting point as a novelist.”