“Writing a first draft is like trying to build a house in a strong wind.”

Wonder. Go on and wonder.

Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.

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.

Political systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don’t draft people; it’s not jury duty.

“The Diagnosis” had ten drafts of very significant changing, where I went through the whole book, wholesale and changed everything. Then the last year or so it was making small changes.

I am the vessel. The draft is God’s. And God is the thirsty one.

News is only the first rough draft of history.

The first thing I noticed about him was that he was born the same year I was drafted. … That’s a pretty scary thought.

The Founders who crafted our Constitution and Bill of Rights were careful to draft a Constitution of limited powers.

As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can’t heat up as well. Cold draft comes in.

I write till the end at least a draft of a play or a novel; but sometimes,