Bob Greene Quotes

My wife says that I changed people's lives or ways of thinking and that I should always be proud and grateful. If I'm dismissive of what we do sometimes, a little bit, she's like, "I was a fan, you changed my life," or whatever. That's what she says.

'Happy Valley' has really changed things for me.

The part of my writing I find the most rewarding is when people write to me or speak to me in public to tell me how his or her life has been changed by my books.

I just want to do roles that are going to change one person's life.

It's so cool, the number of emails I get from people saying I changed their life. It's pretty crazy.

My books and other works are my legacy, and it's a great comfort to know that mine is a legacy of pleasure for other people.

Storytelling is how history is passed. It's what our ancestors did, it's what everybody's done. It has to come back into a story because otherwise, it's stuck in this book and it's boring and it's academic and I'm not against intelligence and I'm not against education, I don't want to be misunderstood, but we have tell the stories to our young people a little bit early and history gives us a lot of things.

What kind of influence do you want to have? What kind of effect do you want to have on other people? Never mistake the power of influence.

My mentor, [Ingmar] Bergman, when we worked on stage, he said you can't convince a thousand people at the big stage where we were working. You can't convince everybody, but just pick one every night that you perform for and make sure that he or she will have an experience that alters their life in a more positive way. So, just one every night. That's worth all the struggle and screaming.

I have met so many young people who do not see the church as relevant and do not consider the Bible a real book of history that can be trusted.

And therefore education at the University mostly worked by the age-old method of putting a lot of young people in the vicinity of a lot of books and hoping that something would pass from one to the other, while the actual young people put themselves in the vicinity of inns and taverns for exactly the same reason.

My books do have a sort of romantic community at the end - people coming together. But on a more basic level, I always see them as being about power, in the same way that Harry Potter books are pitched to a population of young people who really have no power.

[Wham!] totally changed my life. It would be very difficult to know how it changed me as a person; you'd have to ask other people that.

As a speaker, I can inspire people to change but as a writer I can guide people to change. That's why books are so important. As a pastor, though, I can be a part of creating the change the world so desperately needs.

I have Black guys who tell me they put my books on their bed stands to read at night like something for guidance or information. That really pleases me a lot. I think my work has changed some things. It's changed me.

The millionaire says to a thousand people, 'I read this book and it started me on the road to wealth.' Guess how many go out and get the book? Very few. Isn't that incredible? Why wouldn't everyone get the book?!

Like books, the Internet has saved my life. It helped me recognize that so many people I adore suffer from the same things I do.

People ask me what book politicians should read. They should read the life of Mahatma Gandhi.

I see the energy of young people as a real force for positive change.

Generally my favorite remarks always come from my readers. I've had people say my books made them laugh, or cry, or that it frightened them late at night.

I'm not trying to change things in the world and trying to use my leverage to do so. The only thing I'm trying to change in the world is that I'm trying to increase the amount of useful information in it. And entertainment, honestly.

Character alone will have real effect on the masses.

Books are more real when you read them outside.

Young people, when informed and empowered, when they realize that what they do truly makes a difference, can indeed change the world.