I only write books about dead people. They can't sue.

Racism is a refuge for the ignorant. It seeks to divide and to destroy. It is the enemy of freedom, and deserves to be met head-on and stamped out.

The nation is bound together by its creative artists and not by parallel lines of rusting steel.

A Canadian is somebody who knows how to make love in a canoe.

The more I see of the country, the less I feel I know about it. There is a saying that after five years in the north every man is an expert; after ten years, a novice.

My best advice to writers is get yourself born in an interesting place.

I was hated, you know. I made no secret of the fact that I was an atheist. People told me there are no atheists in fox holes. That's nonsense. [interview promoting Marching as to War (2002)]

I am an atheist, a rationalist and a humanist.

We are people of destiny

In mysteries of the mind are infinite miracles.

This will be a winter so desolate, only memory can fill the emptiness

The United States has a long tradition of preserving the all-American outdoor experience, dating back to the days of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

For a lot of people, if they're lucky, it begins with somebody who recognizes something in them.

Twitter! It's like being stalked by committee!

Actually, I'm getting one made up with eight necks and I'm going to get a wheelwright to make a big rim around it and then I can do cartwheels off the stage.

He is dark and quiet and completely different from me, which is exactly why I should put distance between us. But it is also the reason I find him so fascinating.

I am not merry, but I do beguile the thing I am by seeming otherwise.