Experiences are like hoarded gold. Whenever I dole out a piece of my private suffering, that is when I get letters from all over the world.

I will do those things which make me happy today and which I can also live with ten years from now.

The Terrible Truth is that brutality is part of human nature, and all the laws in the world can't neuter it.

Just because you will not see the work completed does not mean you are free not to take it up.

Sooner or later. It had better be sooner. Later is like the horizon; it recedes as you approach.

Man is the universe becoming conscious of itself.

Any person who wants to govern the world is by definition the wrong person to do it.

Some things we must pass over in silence.

When everything is at risk, good judgment, not haste, makes the difference between life and death. Panic is the enemy.

...the larger world lay not across oceans but within the human mind and heart.

My father has always been the heart of my Penn Cage novels.

We can live without our friends but not without our neighbors.

I want to stay away from politics, or else I'll probably end up putting my size fifteen foot into my mouth.

I brought you in this world, and I can take you out!

True bravery means doing alone that which one could do if all the world were by.

A window of opportunity for me usually involves a rock.

I'm not a talker. I'm a formulator.

The Marine Corps taught me how to kill, but it didn't teach me how to deal with killing.

I used to get made fun of for being either too provocative or too eccentric, so I started to tone it down. I didn't fit in, and I felt like a freak.

Man is the plumeless genus of bipeds, birds are the plumed.

Commitment is taking the first step, even if it means falling the rest of the way down.