Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another’s skin, another’s voice, another’s soul.

If you want to know where your heart is, look to where your mind goes when it wanders.

Never has a man who has bent himself been able to make others straight.

To pursue learning is to be human, to give it up to be a beast.

You shouldn’t worry about criticism from someone that you would never ask advice from.

Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. It has no satiation point, since its consummation does not fill the inner emptiness, boredom, loneliness, and depression.

Nothing, to my way of thinking, is better proof of a well-ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.

Always play the hand you have, not the one you wish you had.

One of the most realistic parts of Lord of the Rings is that almost no one wanted to get involved, until it was very nearly too late.

It takes a lot of work to make something simple.

One who looks around him is intelligent; one who looks within him is wise.

Simplicity is the key to brilliance.

I am rooted, but I flow.

An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.

Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience.

Wrong decisions are part of life. Being able to make them work anyway is one of the abilities of those who are successful.

Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets.

I can’t be everything to everyone. I kind of made peace with it years ago—that at this particular phase of my life, this is what I need and this is what I want. It’s also the reason why I’m very particular about who I spend my time with because I do believe that there are genuinely energy vampires and energy catalysts in humans.

Whenever I meet someone, I try to imagine him or her wearing an invisible sign that says: MAKE ME FEEL IMPORTANT! I respond to this sign immediately, and it works wonders.

People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise.