It is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is from the top.

Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.

Being a husband is a whole-time job. That is why so many husbands fail. They cannot give their entire attention to it.

Of all the inhabitants of the inferno, none but Lucifer knows that hell is hell, and the secret function of purgatory is to make of heaven an effective reality.

The price of justice is eternal publicity.

Pessimism, when you get used to it, is just as agreeable as optimism.

Always behave as if nothing had happened, no matter what has happened.

Your own mind is a sacred enclosure into which nothing harmful can enter except by your permission.

Does there, I wonder, exist a being who has read all, or approximately all, that the person of average culture is supposed to have read, and that not to have read is a social sin? If such a being does exist, surely he is an old, a very old man.

We need a sense of the value of time - that is, of the best way to divide one's time into one's various activities.

We shall never have more time. We have, and always had, all the time there is. No object is served in waiting until next week or even until tomorrow. Keep going... Concentrate on something useful.

A first-rate organizer is never in a hurry. He is never late. He always keeps up his sleeve a margin for the unexpected.

Well, my deliberate opinion is - it's a jolly strange world.

Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.

To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.

The great advantage of being in a rut is that when one is in a rut, one knows exactly where one is.

The moment you're born you're done for.

If egotism means a terrific interest in one's self, egotism is absolutely essential to efficient living.

Much ingenuity with a little money is vastly more profitable and amusing than much money without ingenuity.

It is well, when judging a friend, to remember that he is judging you with the same godlike and superior impartiality.

A cause may be inconvenient, but it's magnificent. It's like champagne or high heels, and one must be prepared to suffer for it.

Mother is far too clever to understand anything she does not like.

It is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is from the top.

Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.

There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.

Women are strange and incomprehensible a device invented by Providence to keep the wit of man well sharpened by constant employment.

Any change even a change for the better is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.

Being a husband is a whole time job. That is why so many husbands fail. They cannot give their entire attention to it.

One of the commonest characteristics of the successful man is his idleness, his immense capacity for wasting time.

As I understand I took most so-called democratic states about 200 years on average to build their democracies. That is why, when we go to sleep under totalitarian rule and wake up in a democracy, it makes me laugh.

Total relaxation is the secret to enjoying sitting meditation. I sit with my spine upright, but not rigid; and I relax all the muscles in my body.

I don't know how long my body will allow me to compete, but I can't imagine doing anything else. That day will come, and I just hope there'll be a light shining down a path telling me where to go.

Some people are quick to challenge others but refuse to look in the mirror and challenge themselves.

You judge people as you meet them.

I kept writing all these ballads; they're me speaking about life. But how am I gonna do the live show I wanna do if I don't have something I can dance to?

Let us not listen to those who think we ought to be angry with our enemies, and who believe this to be great and manly. Nothing is so praiseworthy, nothing so clearly shows a great and noble soul, as clemency and readiness to forgive.

My favorite thing about the success I've found is that I get to share it with my family and the ones that I love.

Going on unemployment was a total low point for me, but it was also the point when I promised myself I'd write every day from 9 to 5. I tried to make the most out of every situation that came along.

I grew up in a family full of strong women. A great aunt on my mother's side had been a matron on a hospital ship in World War II, and one on my father's side had served in the Women's Royal Naval Service.

Like everybody at that age, I read an awful lot of pulp fiction. But at the same time, I also read quite a bit of history and read that as much for pleasure as part of a curriculum.

There is absolutely no way that I would enter that world. I would never run for office.

Lots of kids, including my son, have trouble making the leap from reading words or a few sentences in picture books to chapter books. Chapters are often long... 10 pages can seem like a lifetime to a young reader. Then reading becomes laborious and serious. That's why some of the chapters in my books are very short.

One must learn how to be black in America.

You cannot separate sexuality from cheerleading. It is inherently what it is - growing up with the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders and all of that stuff.

I said that if an alien came to visit, I'd be embarrassed to tell them that we fight wars to pull fossil fuels out of the ground to run our transportation. They'd be like, 'What?'

My mom, she was unbelievable. She ran the whole town. She was like the mayor. There would be 15 people eating at our lunch table. She'd drag people from the street.

We live in diverse communities with all sorts of people from all sorts of different backgrounds. The more our entertainment can be a reflection of the world we live in, the better it is for all of us.

You can't predict when a crisis might hit your family, whether it's with an elderly parent or with your children.

My wife is my in-home editor and reads everything I write.