The opportunities for heroism are limited in this kind of world: the most people can do is sometimes not to be as weak as they've been at other times.

Envy has the ugliness of a trapped rat that has gnawed its own foot in its effort to escape.

The novelist must be his own most harsh critic and also his own most loving admirer and about both he must say nothing.

People are able to live with only half a heart, to live without real compassion, because they are able to use words that are only forms.

I have no concern for the common man except that he should not be so common.

Life isn't just to be found, you have to work for it.

Once a Catholic always a Catholic.

The impulse to write a novel comes from a momentary unified vision of life.

The roots of art and play lie very close together.

All fiction for me is a kind of magic and trickery, a confidence trick, trying to make people believe something is true that isn't.

Gerald Middleton was a man of mildly but persistently depressive temperament. Such men are not at their best at breakfast, nor is the week before Christmas their happiest time.

Don't try to tear down other people's religion about their ears, Build up your own perfect structure of truth, and invite your listeners to enter in and enjoy its glories.

If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.

It is less dishonor to hear imperfectly than to speak imperfectly. The ears are excused; the understanding is not.

I think all of these things, there are always names floated - Newt Gingrich's name is out there. Sometimes you just want to make the loyalists happy by floating those names.

I think a man needs to be a man. To hold a woman the way she wants to be held. Just do whatever your woman wants, and you'll be fine.

I have no limits! I cannot be contained because I'm the container.

The craft of writing is the art of penetrating other minds with the figures that are in your own mind.

I remember the very thing that I do not wish to; I cannot forget the things I wish to forget.

Encourage your kids' artistic side. Toughen up everything else.

Money will buy money's worth; but the thing men call fame, what is it?