It dawned on me that no person is as poetically homesick as someone who has come to New York for the first time and glimpsed a small vestige of her home state.

We are never the heroes of our own stories, unless we are lying. If we choose to count ourselves among the brave, we write ourselves as the villains we are, hoping for redemption.

Reliance in its most basic, daily, form is being part of a group that lives by a pact: To always have each other’s backs — no matter what — so that everyone comes out future strong.

A great library contains the diary of the human race.

He serves his party best who serves the country best.

I'm obsessed with Nicholas Sparks. I've literally read every single book, because every time I travel, at the airport, I always buy a new Nicholas Sparks book.

It is so shocking to find out how many people do not believe that they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult.

You might be a redneck if during your senior year you and your mother had homeroom together.

The hardest lesson of my life has come to me late. It is that a nation can win freedom without its people becoming free.

If it is a shame to be the second man on Mount Everest, then I will have to live with this shame.

For me photography was the means to the end, but they made it the most important thing. (On the discovery of X-ray photography.)