If it's to be, it's up to me.
What distinguishes Cambridge from Oxford, broadly speaking, is that nobody who has been to Cambridge feels impelled to write about it.
Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.
If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together. . . there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we're apart. . . I'll always be with you.
Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing
The average man finds life very uninteresting as it is. And I think the reason why is that he is always waiting for something to happen to him instead of setting to work to make things happen
In the quiet hours when we are alone and there is nobody to tell us what fine fellows we are, we come sometimes upon a moment in which we wonder, not how much money we are earning, nor how famous we have become, but what good we are doing.
Well, when I was 13, for my bar mitzvah I received my first typewriter. And that was special.
Be glad that you're greedy; the national economy would collapse if you weren't.
There is no nobler chore in the craft of writing than holding up the mirror of reality and turning it slightly, so we have a new and different perception of the commonplace, the everyday, the 'normal,' the obvious. People are reflected in the glass. The fantasy situation into which you thrust them is the mirror itself. And what we are shown should illuminate and alter our perception of the world around us. Failing that, you have failed totally.
Nineteen thousand children [are] dying every day. Does it really matter that we're not walking past them in the street? Does it really matter that they're far away? I don't think it does make a morally relevant difference.