“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.”

Civilization begins with distillation

The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.

The most important thing is insight, that is to be – curious – to wonder, to mull, and to muse why it is that man does what he does.

Only she tried twice and failed twice to find somebody not just strong enough to deserve it, earn it, match it, but even brave enough to accept it.

Like a fellow running from or toward a gun ain’t got time to worry whether the word for what he is doing is courage or cowardice.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don’t bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.

Life is a process of preparing to be dead for a long time.

If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.

The ideal woman which is in every man’s mind is evoked by a word or phrase or the shape of her wrist, her hand.

It seems hard that a man in his need could be so flouted by a road.

Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do.

Truth; that long clean clear simple undeniable unchallengeable straight and shining line, on one side of which black is black and on the other white is white, has now become an angle, a point of view.

The next time you try to seduce anyone, don’t do it with talk, with words.

The quality an artist must have is objectivity in judging his work, plus the honesty and courage not to kid himself about it.

I only write when I feel the inspiration. Fortunately, inspiration strikes at 10:00 o’clock every day.

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. All of us labor in webs spun long before we were born, webs of heredity and environment, of desire and consequence, of history and eternity.

It’s not beneficial when you have a presidential candidate like Donald Trump, telling his supporters “punch that guy in the face.” I think everyone candidate ought to aspire toward civility, towards decency, towards bringing us together. I don’t think we should be using angry and hateful rhetoric.

We don’t have storm troopers that just knock on the door of every American citizen. We don’t do that for any crime. But when we have evidence that a particular person has committed a crime, we send law enforcement to apprehend them.

The truth is every problem can’t be solved by government. Many are caused by the moral breakdown in our society. And the answers to those challenges lie primarily in our families and our faiths, not our politicians.

My mom’s an artist in every way. She’s a painter, a photographer. She’s a wanderer – always searching, always seeing. I guess you could say my mom gave me her eyes.

If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.

Every nation on the Earth that embraces market economics and the free enterprise system is pulling millions of its people out of poverty. The free enterprise system creates prosperity, not denies it.

Remember, all Tolstoy ever said to describe Anna Karenina was that she was beautiful and could see in the dark like a cat. Every man has a different idea of what’s beautiful, and it’s best to take the gesture, the shadow of the branch, and let the mind create the tree.

I pray before I go into the operating room for every case, and I ask him to give me wisdom, to help me to know what to do – and not only for operating, but for everything.