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

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.

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

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.

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.

A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain.

You know you're getting older when you don't care where your wife goes just so you don't have to go along.

Have children while your parents are still young enough to take care of them.

The doom of a nation can be averted only by a storm of flowing passion, but only those who are passionate themselves can arouse passion in others.

Kim Kardashian is single again. Hey, great. Maybe that will give the NBA players something to do during the lockout.

Tradition is the spreading of fire and not the veneration of ashes.

It's not like I just take the beat, rap on it and take it for what it is, I always have the producer send it to me, loop the track out, move some stuff around.

Man spends a great deal of time making order out of chaos, yet insists that the emotions be disordered. I order my emotions: I am insane.

Any great and inspiring leader or organization that ever existed set out to do something completely unrealistic.

The perils of credit and debt, especially perilous in the computer age, have long been acknowledged in pop culture, but very infrequently by TV.