...the larger world lay not across oceans but within the human mind and heart.

I will do those things which make me happy today and which I can also live with ten years from now.

The Terrible Truth is that brutality is part of human nature, and all the laws in the world can't neuter it.

Just because you will not see the work completed does not mean you are free not to take it up.

Sooner or later. It had better be sooner. Later is like the horizon; it recedes as you approach.

Man is the universe becoming conscious of itself.

Any person who wants to govern the world is by definition the wrong person to do it.

Some things we must pass over in silence.

When everything is at risk, good judgment, not haste, makes the difference between life and death. Panic is the enemy.

Experiences are like hoarded gold. Whenever I dole out a piece of my private suffering, that is when I get letters from all over the world.

My father has always been the heart of my Penn Cage novels.

The casualty of war is our disappearing humanity.

Parents must try to be, or at least put forth their best efforts to be, what they wish [their] children to be. It is impossible for you to be an example of what you are not.

What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.

Loyalty and friendship, which is to me the same, created all the wealth that I've ever thought I'd have.

Gratitude is something of which none of us can give too much. For on the smiles, the thanks we give, our little gestures of appreciation, our neighbors build their philosophy of life.

The way you eat is inseparable from your core beliefs about being alive. Your relationship with food is an exact mirror of your feelings about love, fear, anger, meaning and transformation.

when I am alone in the forest I always say my prayers; and that occasional solitary communion with God is surely the only true religion for intelligent beings.

What can be more stupid than to be in pain about future things and absent ones which at present are not felt?

The amateur is very rare in French literature - as rare as he is common in our own.

Which is the supplement? Fantasy or daily routine?