As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

The question is how to bring a work of imagination out of one language that was just as taken-for-granted by the persons who used it as our language is by ourselves. Nothing strange about it.

Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made.

Poetry is that art which selects and arranges the symbols of thought in such a manner as to excite the imagination the most powerfully and delightfully.

For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.

I think that different pleasures work for different readers - a friend of mine won't read anything that's not a cardiovascular sort of page-turner. I tend to care less about plot but I'm a sucker for humor and strangeness.

Great men are rarely isolated mountain peaks they are the summits of ranges.

What a strange world this would be if we all had the same sense of humor.

I'm not afraid to call a wine that tastes like Skittles or green peppers mixed with orange marmalade. I'll say 'It tastes like chicken.' I mean that's not what people think of when they think of wine but that's what it tastes like to me and it hits home.

I got a scholarship to Seattle University and I was writing arrangements for singers and everybody. But the music course was too dry and I really wanted to get away from home.