It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.

I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.

Fires can't be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labor into pleasant tasks.

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.

The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it.

Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

The American idea of racial progress is measured by how fast I become white.

I'll never wake up in a good mood again.I'm tired of these stinky boots

All stories told have been told before. We tell them to ourselves, as did all men who ever were. And all men who ever will be. The only things new are the names.

For me, there was never an end game for becoming a director.

I hear music as narrative.

I don't use a pen. I write with a goose quill dipped in venom.

I am not what is called a civilized man, professor. I have done with society for reasons that seem good to me. Therefore I do not obey its laws.

Mainly, I try not to think about my readers as I write - I just think of my characters and myself - If they're interesting to me, my hope is that they'll be interesting to others as well.

The world is this incredibly blurry, crazy dream that I'm just sort of stumbling through.

How could she tell him that we come to love those who save us?

I may be the baby of the family, but that doesn't mean I don't get to boss people around.