Jean Paul Richter

I never wanted this kind of life that I’m still living.

The Argument from Intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence.

When I am old, weather-worn, and grey, I want to fill my lungs with your perfume and hear your laughter echo through our home as we dance alone in our living room, drunk off wine, still madly in love.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

I like to surprise myself.

I have been at it ten years. I collect them so that they will not be lost to America. We have no Egyptian mummies here, nor any relics of the Battle of Waterloo nor any curios from Pompeii. It is strictly American.

We should be taught not to wait for inspiration to start a thing. Action always generates inspiration. Inspiration seldom generates action.

How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will.

The South has a future which it can shape for itself, and avoid the mistakes which the more populous parts of the country have made.

I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

There are some sick people in this world.

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

It is true that I am often startled and even angered and repulsed by the strange directions and provocative content of new forms that seem to pop up every few months.

I feel like I got a pile of cattle chasing my ass, and I’m pedaling as hard as I can to stay in front of ‘em. I’m looking behind me driving like hell.