Books, I found, had the power to make time stand still, retreat or fly into the future.

Watching your daughter being collected by her date feels like handing over a million dollar Stradivarius to a gorilla.

A good writer is not, per se, a good book critic. No more so than a good drunk is automatically a good bartender.

The future is an opaque mirror. Anyone who tries to look into it sees nothing but the dim outlines of an old and worried face.

Archaeology is the peeping Tom of the sciences. It is the sandbox of men who care not where they are going; they merely want to know where everyone else has been.

Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.

Autumn carries more gold in its pocket than all the other seasons.

Golf is played by twenty million mature American men whose wives think they are out having fun.

It is difficult to live in the present, ridiculous to live in the future, and impossible to live in the past. Nothing is as far away as one minute ago.

Mulligan: invented by an Irishman who wanted to hit one more twenty yard grounder.

Gimme: An agreement between two losers who can't putt.

Your job is not to judge. Your job is not to figure out if someone deserves something. Your job is to lift the fallen, to restore the broken, and to heal the hurting.

...it is easy not to believe in monsters, considerably more difficult to escape their dread and loathsome clutches.

Political Islam is not a homogeneous bloc.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

Luke warm people are continually concerned with playing it safe; they are slaves to the god of control. This focus on safe living keeps them from sacrificing and risking for God.

You are a child of God.

The divorce of our so-called spiritual life from our daily activities is a fatal dualism.

I don't think movies are the reason why this violence exists, I think it's going to happen whether movies are there or not.

My writing has a lot to do with who I am, and what my life is like, and my relationships to people.

It is lost at dice, what ancient honor won.