The purpose of life is not to be happy—but to matter, to be productive, to be useful, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.

The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it.

Anybody who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.

A writer writes not because he is educated but because he is driven by the need to communicate. Behind the need to communicate is the need to share. Behind the need to share is the need to be understood.

People say: idle curiosity. The one thing that curiosity cannot be is idle.

O, to be sure, we laugh less and play less and wear uncomfortable disguises like adults, but beneath the costume is the child we always are, whose needs are simple, whose daily life is still best described by fairy tales.

I have admired W.C. Fields since the day he advanced upon Baby LeRoy with an ice pick. Any man who hates dogs and babies can't be all bad.