The mind can make substance, and people planets of its own with beings brighter than have been, and give a breath to forms which can outlive all flesh.
We are prodding, challenging, seeking contradictions or small, persistent residual errors, proposing alternative explanations, encouraging heresy. We give our highest rewards to those who convincingly disprove established beliefs.
I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.
I was able to adjust initially by plunging right into the book and the Bush Presidential Center at Southern Methodist University. And it turns out that there is a good way to make a living by giving speeches.
I do not enlighten those who are not eager to learn, nor arouse those who are not anxious to give an explanation themselves. If I have presented one corner of the square and they cannot come back to me with the other three, I should not go over the points again.
Seek no praise, no reward, for anything you do. No sooner do we perform a good action than we begin to desire credit for it. No sooner do we give money to some charity than we want to see our names blazoned in the papers. Misery must come as the result of such desires.
I will be able to love above all discontentment. To give even when I am stripped of everything. To dry tears even when I am still crying. To believe even when I am discredited.