If I really wanted to say or ask anything important (to her imposing father) I could not trust my tongue to get it right.

Love is one of the most powerful healing tools in the universe. Most people forget to use it to build rapport, to deepen their relatedness, and to mend the upset that underlies disagreement and expectation. Sprinkle more love and you will heal only 100% of the time.

There was one story that anger certainly lit the fuse of. In the 1960's, in my home town of Jackson, the civil rights leader Medgar Evers was murdered on night in darkness and I wrote a story that same night about the murderer (identity unknown) called "Where Is The Voice Coming From?" But all that absorbed me, though it started as outrage, was the necessity I felt for entering into the mind and inside the skin of a character who could hardly have been more alien or repugnant to me. Trying for my utmost, I wrote in the first person. I was wholly vaunting the prerogative of the short-story writer. It is always vaunting, of course, to imagine yourself inside another person, but it is what a story writer does in every piece of work; it is his first step, and his last too, I suppose. I'm not sure this story was brought off; and I don't believe that my anger showed me anything about human character that my sympathy and rapport never had.

Lincoln admitted his infirmities to make way for his spring.

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him, and a child cannot afford to be fooled. A child cannot be taught by anyone whose demand, essentially, is that the child repudiate his experience, and all that gives him sustenance.

It's no fun to think about infinity and no cinche to write about it. Again, it helps to look for some human link.

I found that the same softness which once made me a target now compelled people to trust me with their stories.

A real salesman knows how to engage Anyone Anywhere Anytime in a sensible conversation.