“There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.”

More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness

I am an emotional cuss.

All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.

It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.

A tramp, a gentleman, a poet, a dreamer, a lonely fellow, always hopeful of romance and adventure.

Love is life on a higher plain of existence, working through man to unite the forces of nature into a perfect whole.

You’ll never find a rainbow if you’re looking down.

Whomever lives, gambles with life.

My only enemy is time.

People miss happiness by chasing after false values and repressing the feelings that make life valuable and beautiful.

I am an artist, not a politician.

Laughter is very close to tears and vice versa.

Our tragedies are only as big as we make them.

My tramp is made up of mimicry.

Nothing is permanent in this wicked world, not even our troubles.

The desire for peace is universal.

There is one other book, that can teach you everything you need to know about life, it’s The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, but that’s not enough anymore.

All of my books deal in a very rough, rude fashion with subjects about which there are great conflicts of opinion.

Historian Robert Paxton begins one of his books by asserting: Fascism was the major political innovation of the twentieth century, and the source of much of its pain.

Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea.

Starting a novel is opening a door on a misty landscape; you can still see very little but you can smell the earth and feel the wind blowing.

We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry because we didn’t think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.

Above all, except the wife and children, I want to see my books.

Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book.