Books about suicide make lousy gifts.

For Catholics before Vatican II, the land of the free was pre-eminently the land of Sister Says-except, of course, for Sister, for whom it was the land of Father Says.

Of course, history is only a muddle of facts and a fuddle of professors, and anyone who thinks it is one clear voice saying "Arise, sir Knight" deserves a life sentence in Camelot.

Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy - but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are palaces of misery.

I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find.

The only reason I didn't kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers in New York and I couldn't decide which one to jumo into.

The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.

Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.

If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.

The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.

Mr Michener, as timeless as a stack of 'National Geographics,' is the ultimate Summer Writer. Just as one goes back to the cottage in Maine, so one goes back to one's Michener.

In such moments of precious, invaluable misery, she rejoiced in tears of agony...

He never realized how noisy American silence was until all the gadgets died.

It is always wonderful to see how beautiful other people's hearts can be.

The average person is either a weakling, or just a happy person who wants to get along, or thinks being tough is having big muscles and strutting around town and having a good-looking girlfriend.

Most bands have a two-year success rate. By the third year, it's sort of over. Here we are in Poison still together 26 years later.

So I took it as a very positive sign that the club came to me rather than the other way round.

Right now, more people enjoy movies, music, television and movies than they do video games.

A common error of ignorance is to maintain that what one does not know does not exist.

He loves me." "You sound surprised." "Nobody ever did. Not like this. It's easy to say, for some people. The words. But it's not just words with Roarke. He sees inside me, and it doesn't matter.

I try to be feminine, yet intellectual and smart at the same time. You don't see enough of that.