“I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.”

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Things are never as bad as they seem.

We’re paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.

I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.

I do much of my creative thinking while golfing. If people know you’re working at home they think nothing of walking in for a cup of coffee, but wouldn’t dream of interrupting on the golf course.

Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?

Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.

Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

Sometimes the Bible in the hands of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.

But before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.

You can’t really get to know a person until you get in their shoes and walk around in them.

People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.

Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don’t like to do that. Sometimes it’s unpleasant.

Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids, in fact it’s cold as hell.

In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall succeed in our aims: the improvement of mankind.

Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge.

The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind.

I kinda live where I find myself.

Think of many things. Never place your happiness in one person’s power. Be just to yourself.

Some kinds of nails, such as those used for defending the soles of coarse shoes, called hobnails, require a particular form of the head, which is made by the stroke of a die.

I marshalled the words and opened my mouth, thinking I would hear them. But all I heard was a kind of rattle, unintelligible even to me who knew what was intended.