Never take advice from a donkey.

First with the head, then with the heart.

I tell myself lies and soon I believe them.

The imagination is always the best torturer.

Small can beat big, but you must have a plan.

Dare your genius to walk the wildest unknown ways.

I am essentially an entertainer and a storyteller.

It's not what a man does, it's what a man is that counts!

People say I don't write books, I make Christmas presents.

When men can be made to hope, then they can be made to win.

Winning is a state of mind that embraces everything you do.

You can't go feeding your hate on the past, it's not natural.

sometimes in life doing what we shouldn't do is the emergency

Sometimes, very occasionally, you do your best boxing with your mouth.

The only thing that's authentic about what a writer writes is his work.

But I was still alive, and in my book, where there's life, there's hope.

I have found in life that everything, no matter how bad, comes to an end.

Words are like diamonds. Polish them too much, and all you get are pebbles.

Always listen to yourself... It is better to be wrong than simply to follow convention.

. . . besides love, independence of thought is the greatest gift an adult can give a child.

Innocents, the meat in a ghastly sandwich between an uncaring society and a vengeful state.

It's nothing to be ashamed of. There comes a time in everything when you don't know something.

I wish to cup knowledge in my hand and drink it as one drinks water by the side of the stream.

I'm going to die with my mind intact. And to me that is the most exciting way you could possibly die.

Pride is holding your head up when everyone around you has theirs bowed. Courage is what makes you do it.

What's the point in being an unpopular writer? It just doesn't make a lot of sense. For me it doesn't, anyway.

Good conversational debate is an end in itself, and talking for the love of conversation is what makes us human.

You've got to be quick on your feet in this world if you want to survive. Though once you know the rules, it is not too hard to play the game.

My job is essentially that of an entertainer, no different to that of a musician, no different to that of an actor. I just happen to be an author.

One thing is certain in life. Just when things are going well, soon afterward they are certain to go wrong. It's just the way things are meant to be.

Racism does not diminish with brains, it's a disease, a sickness, it may incubate in ignorance but it doesn't necessarily disappear with the gaining of wisdom!

Love is energy: it can neither be created nor destroyed. It just is and always will be, giving meaning to life and direction to goodness... Love will never die.

I guess my use-by date is just about up but if I could come back as a storyteller now, I would be jumping over the moon because wow, just think what's available.

I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed.

My job, and that's my job, is to dress the naked truth. To make it interesting, to make it viable, to make it seem like something you understand and feel and love.

It's good to be a little frightened. It's good to respect your opponent. It keeps you sharp. In the fight game, the head rules the heart. But in the end the heart is the boss.

If I were king of the world there wouldn't be boat people, there would only be people coming in boats. I would mix us all up so that we were all exactly one shade of each other.

Advertising was only meant to be a very small part of my life. I had intended that I would work extensively in journalism for about five or six years and then I'd become a writer.

Inside all people there is love, also the need to take care of the other man who is his brother. Inside everyone is a savage, but there is also happening tenderness and compassion.

It's been a privilege to write for you and to have you accept me as a storyteller in your lives, Now, as my story draws to an end, may I say only, `Thank you. You have been simply wonderful'.

I watch people get older and lose their intellectual acuity; you lose that sharpness, that cleanness, that brain that you worked so hard on and that you were gifted with and lose the gifts that were given.

The only thing I can say that is wonderful about my mother is she forced me to learn three verses of the Bible every day of my life, and I've read the Bible now five times and it taught me the English language.

Your brain, Peekay, has two functions; it is a place for original thought, but also it is a reference library. Use it to tell you where to look, and then you will have for yourself all the brains that have ever been

Intelligence is a harder gift. For this you must work, you must practice it, challenge it, and maybe toward the end of your life you will master it. Cleverness is the shadow, whereas intelligence is the substance. -Doc

Each of us has been designed for one of two immortal functions, as either a storyteller or as a cross-legged listener to tales of wonder, love, and daring. When we cease to tell or listen, then we no longer exist as a people.

I knew then that the person on the outside was only a shell, a presence to be seen and provoked. Inside was the real me, where my tears joined the tears of all the sad people to form the three waterfalls in the night country.

I was born illegitimately and almost immediately, as I understand it, placed in an orphanage. So my very earliest memories were in an orphanage. It was the tag end of the Great Depression when I was born. People were desperately poor.

Always listen to yourself. It is better to be wrong than to simply follow convention. If you are wrong, no matter, you have learned something and you will grow stronger. If you are right, you have taken another step toward a fulfilling life.

Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.

what is a german? to say a man is a german, what is that? does it tell you if he is a good man? or a bad man? no, my friend, it tells you nothing about a man to say he is german. a man must think what he is inside. what he is on the outside, how can this matter?

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