"I think it's really hard to be joyful. I work hard at it. I always feel like it's a choice. You can be joyful or you can be depressed, and there just doesn't seem to be any future in depression."

“Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!”

“A jury is more apt to be unbiased and independent than a court, but they very seldom stand up against strong public clamor. Judges naturally believe the defendant is guilty.”

“The sun shines, snow falls, mountains rise and valleys sink, night deepens and pales into day, but it is only very seldom that we attend to such things. . . . When we are grasping the inexpressible meaning of these things, this is life, this is living. To do this twenty-four hours a day is the Way of Haiku. It is having life more abundantly.”

Source : Reginald Horace Blyth (1995). “The genius of haiku: readings from R.H. Blyth on poetry, life, and Zen”

“Somehow this literary genre, which most people condemned, acted as a sort of counterbalance to Charles's soul; it was the ballast that prevented him from lurching into the serious or melancholy, unlike Andrew, who had been unable to adopt his cousin's casual attitude to life, and to whom everything seemed so achingly profound, imbed with that absurd solemnity that the transience of of existence conferred upon even the smallest act.”

“What a dreadful thing it must be to have a dull father.”

Source : Mary Mapes Dodge (2012). “Hans Brinker”, p.163, Simon and Schuster

“I worry about the many things that could happen to the people I love.”

Source : "From the archive: James Herbert on rats and redemption". Interview with Andrew Billen, www.theguardian.com. 1993.

“I really unfortunately don't have tons of hilarious Sundance stories, because really I am not the biggest fan of hanging out, but the reason why is because I never go see other people's movies and I think that's the way to do it.”

“You can accept reality, or you can persist in your purpose until reality accepts you.”