The coconut trees, lithe and graceful, crowd the beach like a minuet of slender elderly virgins adopting flippant poses.

Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity.

But there are no loners. No man lives in a void. His every act is conditioned by his time and his society.

A man's task is to find himself, and if he fails in this, it doesn't much matter what else he finds.

Actors who have tried to play Churchill and MacArthur have failed abysmally because each of those men was a great actor playing himself.

He [Gen. Douglas MacArthur] never went to church, but he read the Bible every day and regarded himself as one of the world's two great defenders of Christendom. (The other was the pope.)

An Edwardian lady in full dress was a wonder to behold, and her preparations for viewing were awesome.

The sum of a million facts is not the truth.

I try to be as ruthless as possible. I ask myself of each sentence, "Is it clear? Is it true? Does it feel good?" And if it's not, then I rewrite it.

His [Gen. Douglas MacArthur's] own heroes were Lincoln and Washington, and in some ways he resembled them. Like them, he was slandered and misunderstood.

To the medieval mind the possibility of doubt did not exist.

Even when we do our very best to treat those close to us with utmost respect and understanding, conflict happens. That’s life. That’s human nature.

Are stress and worry evidence of a soul too lazy, too undisciplined, to keep gaze fixed on God?

Fast movement during exercise does not produce fast muscles, or strong muscles, or large muscles, it produces only one thing, a thing to be avoided, it produces injuries.

I didn't get lessons of any kind I slept through school.

I get joy, and actually, a high... by putting a quarter in a meter.

I hope some of your DNA transferred to me.

What is The Subconscious to every other man, in its creative aspect becomes, for writers, The Muse.

In every village there will arise a miscreant to establish the most grinding tyranny by calling himself the people.

I have great trouble with the people who envision AIDS as a punishment from God.

Don't trust anybody who'd rather be grammatically correct than have a good time.