What? No defense? Any student of mine must be able to defend his ideas against an attack. No matter how you spend your life, your wit will defend you more often than a sword. Keep it sharp!

When we are children we seldom think of the future. This innocence leaves us free to enjoy ourselves as few adults can. The day we fret about the future is the day we leave our childhood behind.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts.

I have, of course, been called many other things. Most of them uncouth, although very few were unearned

The world is a mess and I just need to rule it.

Half of seeming clever is keeping your mouth shut at the right times.

It's like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.

It was wise enough to know itself, and brave enough to be itself, and wild enough to change itself while somehow staying altogether true.

If I seem to wander, if I seem to stray, remember that true stories seldom take the straightest way

There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

Do not mistake me for my mask. You see light dappling on the water and forget the deep, cold dark beneath.

I don't want to inhabit the human world under false pretenses.

I see God every day... For God is in everything I see.

I love fruit, when it is expensive.

Oh God.” said Magnus, “they’re dead. They’re all dead!

When you adapt a book, you really have to cut it to the essence.

Once a guy starts wearing silk pajamas it's hard to get up early.

I think of myself as Special Forces, clearing the path for the infantry.

I really do think about the fact that every day counts. I believe that every individual counts, and so I believe that every day counts and I try not to waste it.

God does so love to make a man break a promise.

Americans are somehow obsessed with her, and something about me hit a spot with people in Japan.