[General James Mattis] a very talented individual. He's - has a personal library of about 10,000 books and he's read most of them on military history and strategy and so forth.

Given this president [Donald Trump] and his lack of military experience, I think it actually might be a good thing to have someone who understands the military very deeply to be counseling him.

General [James] Mattis has got a really intellectual mindset about how the United States should go about protecting its national security.

t I think what [James Mattis] will do with the deal is monitor it very, very carefully and make sure that Iran is complying with every stipulation of it.

I think that you will see some significant changes in the [Donald] Trump administration.

Certainly, we shouldn't go about making a habit of taking generals and making them secretary of defense.

So in his very politically-incorrect way, I think [James Mattis] is a good counterpart to Donald Trump, who doesn't read books.

[General James Mattis] said, reading allows you to learn from other people's mistakes without filling body bags with the bodies of your soldiers as you learn on the battlefield.

[ General James Mattis] is a Marine's Marine who has served in combat in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Iran has proxies in Yemen, Syria, Iraq. You can push back against Iran without pulling out of the deal.

...writers, like priests, should have compassion...and a sensitivity to pain...

Walter Parmenter sometimes seemed to his daughter a restless subterranean force held together by rituals.

Shit happens everyday. How you deal with it makes all the difference.

I always knew I'd go to space.

People are living longer than ever before, a phenomenon undoubtedly made necessary by the 30-year mortgage.

Did I help you toward a fate you didn't want, Alaska, or did I just assist in your willful self-destruction?

TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.

Profound thoughts and profound experiences get revealed to be tricks that we play on ourselves, and poetry gets revealed to be just, like, some dumb words that somebody put in an interesting order.

The speed will increase and the players will be better, but also the players around you will be a lot better. It all cancels itself out.

If I had to pick one quality that best predicts success (other than wanting to be successful) it would be the willingness to risk embarrassment.