“I began to write when I was seven, and I have been writing off and on ever since. It is still off and on. You can say that when I am on, when I know I have a book which I am going to write, then I write two thousand words a day. That’s so many pages longhand.”

He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery.

Worse than madness. Sanity.

People don’t help much.

A star appeared…and was momentarily eclipsed by some movement.

The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream.

He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. Frowning, he tried again.

He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life,where every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s waking life was spent watching one’s feet.

The trouble was, if you were a chief you had to think, you had to be wise.

Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure.

Serve you right if something did get you, you useless lot of cry-babies!

Graham Greene at 82 years old was still writing, and I don’t think anyone can deny the force, the expertise, and the unique quality of his writing, if you take his complete oeuvre.

Of the authors writing in English, I’d mention Shakespeare and Milton. But all this is terribly high-hat and makes me sound very po-faced, I’m afraid; however, I just happen to like these enormous, swinging, great creatures.

There is, they say, no fool like an old fool.

Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.

There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.

His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.

Why it’s been left to me to smooth things over, I don’t know. Dennis Rodman, of all people.

The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been an I person.

I asked a girl who came from America to England, when I was only English, and she admitted she had been to a drama school. And I said, “What did they teach you?” And she said, “They taught me to be a candle burning in an empty room.”

Assists is what Earvin is all about. That’s what my whole life has been, assisting others.

It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others.

I’ve stopped wanting a home, I think, because I’ve been on tour all my life, basically.

I love Oklahoma. The fans have been with me every night. What more can you ask for?

You’ve been telling us about how to secure peace, but come on, now, General-just among us Rotarians and Rotary Anns-‘fess up!