Quit thinking that you must halt before the barrier of inner negativity. You need not. You can crash through... whatever we see a negative state, that is where we can destroy it.
What you really want for yourself is always trying to break through, just as a cooling breeze flows through an open window on a hot day. Your part is to open the windows of your mind.
It often happens that the man who pursues the dollar too diligently finds it hard to catch, but if he will pursue some other and better goal, dollars come around to see what sort of fellow he is.
There have been many occasions when I found it helpful to talk out loud to my own thoughts, ordering the unwholesome ones to go off somewhere and jump into the river.
It is true I gained muscular vigour, but with it a prodigious appetite, which I was compelled to indulge, and consequently increased in weight, until my kind old friend advised me to forsake the exercise.
I have a simple plan to solve the economic crisis. Give every American a $100 credit to the dog track of their choice. I have found the puppies to be a reliable source of income with a consistent rate of return.
It's fun to deliver material on live TV because it's more off-the-cuff, but I like writing better. You really can measure the joke, think an extra second and nail the right reference.
What is it in people, or just in people like me, that would rather let a lie go by, would rather wish it away or minimize it, than point it out and cause the liar embarrassment?
We want to believe that we're invulnerable, and that people who get tricked deserve it. Well, they don't. And someday the arrogant types who mock the gullible are likely to get their turn to wear the dunce cap.
Let the novelists fret about consistency - story writers should feel free to jam; to get things right in new, surprising ways by allowing themselves, now and then, to get things wrong.
E-mails, phone calls, Web sites, videos. They're still all letters, basically, and they've come to outnumber old-fashioned conversations. They are the conversation now.
If writers, like comedians or singers, could only hear themselves bombing as they worked, it's likely that certain books would be cut short after the first few leaden sentences.
You're able to do things in novels: introduce subplots, other characters, thematic layers and so on, in a way that you simply can't in a movie. A movie really has to choose its battles.
It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.
I like what Oliver Lakes does on the saxophone. The saxophone comes pretty close to the sound of the human voice and when Oliver plays with other sax players, it's like a dialogue.
I like connecting the abstract to the concrete. There's a tension in that. I believe the reader or listener should be able to enter the poem as a participant. So I try to get past resolving poems.
I’ve been here before, dreaming myself backwards, among grappling hooks of light. True to the seasons, I’ve lived every word spoken. Did I walk into someone’s nightmare?
She wonders if this is what people call falling in love, the desire to be with someone for every minute of the rest of her life so strong that sometimes she is frightened of herself.
There is nothing selfish, dazzling, or preposterous about dreamers; in everyday life they blend in rather than stand out, though it's not hiding. A real dreamer must have a mutual trust with time.
The most important thing for me is to walk the little alleys of the city, to find the little alcove where someone is cooking something, and just watch them do it. That's my idea of fun.
I'm a firm believer that the world should be your oyster when you're cooking. People should open themselves to other cuisines - there are a lot of hidden secrets all over the world.
