The average American can get into the kingdom of heaven much more easily than he can get into the Boulevard St. Germain.

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it.

We are not the same persons this year as last; nor are those we love. It is a happy chance if we, changing, continue to love a changed person.

To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.

It's a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too.

The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.

The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.

It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and then they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary it makes them, for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind.

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than in the young.

Delicious days ahead for solitude and writing and, oh yes, the holiday meal with family. Live with my characters until term starts in 2012!

The problem with the press is that they can't tell the difference between a bicycle crash and the end of civilization.

If the noun is good and the verb is strong, you almost never need an adjective.

Unless you are a fortune-teller, long-term business planning is a fantasy.

My friends would probably describe me as silly. And honest. And that I think about things a bit too much.

A country that is governed by its national army can never be morally free and, therefore, its so-called weakest member can never rise to his full moral height.

It was told in the Bible. A man fell. He bit into knowledge and fell... How do you fall without falling completely? What do you bring as knowledge to a blank canvas? How do you begin?

Perhaps more than any other disease before or since, syphilis in early modern Europe provoked the kind of widespread moral panic that AIDS revived when it struck America in the 1980s.

The key to enjoying the moment is to always carry a list of "Things I Gotta Do That Can Wait.

Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances!