I read Christopher McDougall's book 'Born to Run.' If running were a religion this would be its bible. I actually scribbled my favorite passages on my arm to read during the race.

I know many writers who first dictate passages then polish what they have dictated. I speak then I polish - occasionally I do windows.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13 and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia.

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well.

The Word of God well understood and religiously obeyed is the shortest route to spiritual perfection. And we must not select a few favorite passages to the exclusion of others. Nothing less than a whole Bible can make a whole Christian.

I believe there is complete equality between men and women. And I believe those passages in the New Testament not by Jesus but by Paul that say women should not adorn themselves they should always wear hats or color their hair in church - things like that - I think they are signs of the times and should not apply to modern-day life.

As a young man you don't notice at all that you were after all badly affected. For years afterwards at least ten years I kept getting these dreams in which I had to crawl through ruined houses along passages I could hardly get through.

One of the most beautiful passages of Rousseau is that in the sixth book of Confessions where he describes the awakening in him of the literary sense. Of such wisdom the poetic passion the desire of beauty the love of art for its own sake has most.