“When two men in business always agree, one of them is unnecessary.”

“The world, moment by ordinary or agonizing moment, lies chock-full with its own clarifications and rewards. That such rewards most often go unnoticed keeps the artist in business.”

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessay sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

“1. Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic.”

“That’s all a man can hope for during his lifetime – to set an example – and when he is dead, to be an inspiration for history.”

“Monday, June 9: People think they know you. They think they know how you're handling a situation. But the truth is no one knows. No one knows what happens after you leave them, when you're lying in bed or sitting over your breakfast alone and all you want to do is cry or scream. They don't know what's going on inside your head--the mind-numbing cocktail of anger and sadness and guilt. This isn't their fault. They just don't know. And so they pretend and they say you're doing great when you're really not. And this makes everyone feel better. Everybody but you.”

“Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.”