Every accepted public quote

“The more underdeveloped the country, the more overdeveloped the women.”

“I have lived with several Zen masters -- all of them cats.”

“Enjoy all things.”

“Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will ta...”

“Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...It's about learning to dance in the rain.”

“When you handwrite something, you're writing your most raw, pure thoughts. If you want to change it, then you have to mark it out, and people can see you laboring over that thought. I think...”

“And that's when I understand that I have been stained. Whether I'm still in love with him, whether he was ever in love with me, and no matter who he's in love with now, Willem changed my lif...”

“Break the spine of one of my books and I break yours.”

“I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.”

“Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.”

“How do I love Tim McGraw? Let me count the ways: I love that he's a country boy with a city sensibility. I love that he refuses to be pegged, and his duet with Nelly proves it. And I really...”

“I didn't see myself any different from my white counterparts in school. I just didn't! I thought I could do what they did. And what I didn't do well, I thought people were going to give me t...”

“And then he - Tchaikovsky - turned towards the little lectern that was on the stage, picked up his baton and held it in the air. He paused a moment. It was like watching an old wizard with a...”

“The paper landed on the table, but the news was stapled to his chest. A tattoo.”

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

“Girls are much more psychic than guys. They're the first to know if you're going to get laid.”

“Persona-wise, I represent a lot of people's childhoods.”

“How absurd that our students tuck their cell phones, BlackBerrys, iPads, and iPods into their backpacks when they enter a classroom and pull out a tattered textbook.”

“Should it matter what genre it is if the book is good?”

“Before we were born, a whole society of storytellers was already here. The storytellers who were here before us taught us how to be human.”

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

“Silence is a lie that screams at the light.”

“I am not the river I am the net.”

“It may be that our cosmic curiosity... is a genetically-encoded force that we illuminate when we look up and wonder.”

“Go over your passions, and when you have found the right one, hold on to it without listening to the others.”

“I think the next thing I publish will be for children, but I don't really want to be held to that because I also know what my next book for adults will be, and I really like that, too, so it...”

“Hands down, the biggest thrill is to get a letter from a kid saying, I loved your book. Will you write me another one?”

“Barack wasn't a real black man, like them--someone who spoke like that, looked like that, and read that many books could never be. What bothered me most was that Barack exemplified everythin...”

“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

“My favourite kind of comedy comes from the awkwardness of living, the stuff that makes you cringe but borders on tragic - that is more interesting to me. It resonates; it comes from emotiona...”

“I love you every day. And now I will miss you every day.”

“If you liked being a teenager, there's something really wrong with you.”

“I'm interested in that drive, that rush to judgment, that is so prevalent in our society. We all know that pleasurable rush that comes from condemning, and in the short term it's quite a sat...”

“I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks.”

“As long as you as an individual... can convince yourself that in order to move forward as best you can you have to be optimistic, you can be described as 'one of the faithful,' one of those...”

“God surely did not create us, and cause us to live, with the sole end of wishing always to die. I believe, in my heart, we were intended to prize life and enjoy it, so long as we retain it....”

“Don't cry over someone who wouldn't cry over you.”

“Music really becomes the soundtrack to the major events to your life.”

“Every time I see documentaries or infomercials about little kids with cancer, I just freak out. It affects me on the highest emotional level... Anytime I think about it, it makes me sadder t...”

“Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

“To be alive is to be missing.”

“Look,' he says, 'have you ever looked forward to reading a book so much you can't actually start it?' 'Oh totally. All the time - if I had a grain of self-restraint I never would've been abl...”

“I'm a storyteller who wants to tell untold, meaningful, universal stories in unforgettable ways. I want to do it all, study it all, and find my place in it.”

“Money isn't everything - but it's a long way ahead of what comes next.”

“It's not that I don't value my life. It's just that I love taking chances, testing myself, stepping over the line.”

“Thank God for books and music and things I can think about.”

“I'm not clean or even vaguely pleasant to be around in a domestic situation.”

“I think, as a musician and person, Justin Timberlake is someone I've always looked up to.”