“If you can't give it all you've got, don't bother.”

“Sometimes the gap between what you are and what you want to be is a little piece of paper called your college degree. So jump.”

“Not everything you're good at is what you're called to do.”

“There's something very enticing about an empty bench under a tree. And if it's facing a river, that's the bench for me.”

“I know I can't own a hilltop, a meadow, or a mountainside. But keeping it a secret somehow makes it mine.”

“When I trust someone I do it without doubt or fear or reservation. And then I work on a Plan B.”

“Some read to learn, some to laugh, and some to live.”

“Like many writers, I lived inside of books as a child.”

“Oh this? It's a 'bookworm.'They live in books, and they love to eat important or valuable words.”

“My mother taught me that reading is a kind of work, and that every paragraph merits exertion, and in this way, I learned how to absorb difficult books. Soon after I went to kindergarten, however, I...”

“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.”

“As Blake wrote in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.”

“It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.”