Even though I was a reluctant reader in junior high and high school, I found myself writing poems in the back of class.

I think the world sort of looks to the kids who have potential. These are the kids who are going to do something with their lives, who are going to do something for the world. I don't think it's malicious, but the other kids get lost from that point on.

I've always wanted to write about the other side of the tracks, the have-nots, maybe because that's who I was.

A lot of people ask me, 'Are you born a writer?' And I don't think it's necessarily true. I just think what you either have or you don't is this ability to see something that's complex and worth talking about.

Thought is the original source of all wealth, all success, all material gain, all great discoveries and inventions, and of all achievement.

The men who have furnished me with my greatest inspiration have not been men of wealth, but men of deeds.

Excess of wealth is cause of covetousness.

Aggression at a time when the economy was growing at substantial rates and the retail lending as an industry was growing at a substantial rate was an appropriate aggression. Caution at a time when the economic environment is so uncertain is an appropriate caution.