We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible.

Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse.

Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He's the chap who makes it possible for civilized folk to despise war.

All a writer's characters are imaginary, no matter whether they are based on real people or not. They are people as one imagines them to be.

Smiling, I cut across the quadrangle toward the commons. I felt better about life than I had in a very long time. We could do this, Lissa and me. We could do this together.

Whatever success you have had, whatever victories you have experienced, whatever you have done so far in your life is only a fraction of the potential within you

Believe in yourself and power of your dreams.

Great passions, my dear, don't exist: they're liars fantasies. What do exist are little loves that may last for a short or a longer while.

Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience--buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello--become new all over again.

I buy thousands of books a year.

I don't like my men to be too ornate. I like them to stand back and let their women shine, and they should really wear the pants in the relationship.

It's hard to see your destination when you're focused on the cracks in the sidewalk.

To talk of luck and chance only shows how little we really know of the laws which govern cause and effect.

I haven't travelled that much before so this is the first time I get to see the big cities of Europe. I've never even been to US.