Brilliantly lit from stem to stern, she looked like a sagging birthday cake.

Even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit - a magic blend of skill, faith, and valor - that can lift men from certain defeat to incredible victory.

Events alone rarely provide much guide to the future.

It's a funny thing, but today the Titanic is probably much more - that is people are much more aware of it than they were in 1954, when I was doing my research.

I look for something that is highly unusual, involving ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations.

The ones that measure up are not always the ones you expect.

I never earned a dollar that was not somehow through writing.

Someone once told me the one thread that runs through them all is a premium on personal courage - not intellectual courage, but just plain physical courage.

There were exceptions, a couple of families that just plain didn't want to even think about it, although forty years had passed but mostly the people were very interested in talking about it.

Real christians always forgive before they are asked for forgiveness.

Much may be made of a Scotchman if he be caught young.

Just letting it out is one of the definitions of bad art.

Short term memory makes no difference if you've lost your mind.

Create something, sell it, make it better, sell it some more and then create something that obsoletes what you used to make.

In French literature, you can choose a la carte; in Spanish literature, there is only the set meal.

We live so little time in this world that it is no matter how wretched and miserable we are, if it prepares us for heaven.

In revolution there are only two sorts of men, those who cause them and those who profit by them.

I am in the habit of looking not so much to the nature of a gift as to the spirit in which it is offered.

In the end, you write the book that grabs you by the throat and demands to be written.