"Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen."

"All the intelligence and talent in the world can't make a singer. The voice is a wild thing. It can't be bred in captivity. It is a sport, like the silver fox. It happens."

"The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always."

"The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is."

"Very often, writing a song is a process that happens to me rather than one that I instigate. I feel a song coming on and, like a sneeze; I wait for it until it comes."

"Patience, that blending of moral courage with physical timidity."

"In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth."

"Everything comes in time to those who can wait."