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The real secret of success is enthusiasm.

I don't care what color the parents are. I don't care if it's a giraffe and a fish living together. If they're raising children who believe they're honored and loved, that's all that's important.

A very small cause which escapes our notice determines a considerable effect that we cannot fail to see, and then we say that the effect is due to chance.

Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

I'm very lucky in that my agent and my editors know better. They don't push me. Because I don't take that well.

The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life. It is present in the infinity of forms and phenomena that exist in all of creation.

On the one hand, the idea of marriage and the sort of traditional family life repulses me. But on the other hand, I long for it, you know what I mean? I'm constantly in conflict with things. And it is because of my past and my upbringing and the journey that I've been on.

I had a gig in Sweden. There were thousands of people there, and when I launched into 'I'm Yours,' they were all singing along. It was as if I was singing the Swedish national anthem. I was stunned.

A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant, and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements are connected by an and not by a but.

Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal.

We have ended the VIP culture in Delhi. We made additional night shelters for the poor. We have started the anti-corruption helpline. We are impartial and are not against anybody.

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

A wise man associating with the vicious becomes an idiot; a dog traveling with good men becomes a rational being.

I love working if it's with people who are capable of having a good time. People with a little bit of enjoyment of what they do. If it's enormous pressure, and people feel that their lives are at stake, then it's agony. So I try to pick projects where I feel like I'm going to avoid those traps.

I'm pretty rigorous about the drafts I turn in. I don't turn in something that's so ungodly they go, 'What the hell is this?'

I always make sure that the world will prove me right. It gives me the freedom to contradict myself.

As governor, I enjoy the opportunity to talk about Utah's measurable business success.

Public interest is a very unruly horse.

I have therefore concluded to apply for the privilege of becoming a Cadet at West Point.

V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' Notice the 'glimpse' part of this. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse gives life, turned into something that illuminates the moment and may, if we're lucky -- that word again -- have even further ranging consequences and meaning. The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things: of how things out there really are and how he sees those things -- like no one else sees them. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right they can hit all the notes.