The actual Irish weather report is really a recording made in 1922, which no one has had occasion to change. "Scattered showers, periods of sunshine."

For Catholics before Vatican II, the land of the free was pre-eminently the land of Sister Says-except, of course, for Sister, for whom it was the land of Father Says.

Of course, history is only a muddle of facts and a fuddle of professors, and anyone who thinks it is one clear voice saying "Arise, sir Knight" deserves a life sentence in Camelot.

Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy - but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are palaces of misery.

I picked up the writing on the very day he died. It was the only consolation I could find.

The only reason I didn't kill myself after I read the reviews of my first book was because we have two rivers in New York and I couldn't decide which one to jumo into.

The American male doesn't mature until he has exhausted all other possibilities.

Suicide is about life, being in fact the sincerest form of criticism life gets.

If the French were really intelligent, they'd speak English.

The worse we treat people in this country, the more delicately we talk about them.

Mr Michener, as timeless as a stack of 'National Geographics,' is the ultimate Summer Writer. Just as one goes back to the cottage in Maine, so one goes back to one's Michener.

How can you forgive what I

At the most basic level, self-deception is fooling ourselves into believing something that is false -- or -- not believing something that is true.

To see a shadow and think it is a tree-that is a pity but to see a tree and to think it a shadow can be fatal.

Days are scrolls: write on them only what you want remembered.

I don't want anyone to ever say that I don't belong where I am.

A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit.

I've aged, but grown up? No.

News conference in Chicago, where he apologized for the above statement, which was accepted by the Vatican. (11 August 1966)

Government not just for a few, it belongs to the common people.

Sweet flowers alone can say what passion fears revealing.