Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.

Once you have learned to trust your own voice and allowed that creative force inside you to come out, you can direct it to write short stories, novels, and poetry, do revisions, and so on. You have the basic tool to fulfill your writing dreams. But beware. This type of writing will uncover other dreams you have, too-going to Tibet, being the first woman president of the United States, building a solar studio in New Mexico-and they will be in black and white. It will be harder to avoid them.

I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.

There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.

We think of speaking as something we do naturally, without any effort. But like playing music, it requires attention and knowledge and practice.

The great thing about working out at a gym is that if you put in effort, you get very obvious results. The same should be true of college. A professor’s job is to teach students how to see their minds growing in the same way they can see their muscles grow when they look in a mirror.