If the world was made for us, then it BELONGS to us and we can do what we damn well please with it.

The premise of the Taker story is 'the world belongs to man'. … The premise of the Leaver story is 'man belongs to the world'.

[A]ny species that exempts itself from the rules of competition ends up destroying the community in order to support its own expansion.

No one species shall make the life of the world its own.' … That's one expression of the law. Here's another: 'The world was not made for any one species.

You shouldn't have to settle for rabbits if what you want is deer

The obvious can sometimes be illuminating when perceived in an unhabitual way.

The journey itself is going to change you, so you don’t have to worry about memorizing the route we took to accomplish that change.

And every time the Takers stamp out a Leaver culture, a wisdom ultimately tested since the birth of mankind disappears from the world beyond recall.

[N]ow we have a clearer idea what this story is all about: The world was made for man, and man was made to rule it.

This is precisely how someone speaks who imagines that he is the world's divinely appointed ruler: 'I will not LET them starve. I will not LET the drought come. I will not LET the river flood.

With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man?

Ugly doesn't have a color. It lives among selfishness and hate

It's a grand thing to be able to take your money in your hand and to think no more of it when it slips away from you than you would a trout that would slip back into the stream.

I'm not very geeky. I'm quite homespun. I would say I'm more modern rustic than gadget-orientated. I like woollen things and log fires and whiskey

The man of the millennium is much more liberated than the man of the '90s.

The only absolute attainment is absolute abandonment.

I believe that whatever your religious preference, there has to be a commitment to family because everything really does start there.

I like giving. Doing something for somebody else feels good.

I don't just want to be another cog in the gears of Hollywood.

Tell someone you are going to rob them and all that will happen is that you'll get a reputation as a truthful man.

I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.