Because love is the meeting point of truth and magic. Truth, as in photography; magic, as in ballooning.

A pier is a disappointed bridge; yet stare at it for long enough and you can dream it to the other side of the Channel.

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.

The land of embarrassment and breakfast.

When you read a great book, you don't escape from life, you plunge deeper into it.

History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.

What is the easiest, the most comfortable thing for a writer to do? To congratulate the society in which he lives: to admire its biceps, applaud its progress, tease it endearingly about its follies.

Some of the freckles I once loved are now closer to liver spots. But it’s still the eyes we look at, isn’t it? That’s where we found the other person, and find them still.

The more you learn, the less you fear. "Learn" not in the sense of academic study, but in the practical understanding of life.

Really, it had been stupid to expect anything anyway. A few late nights does not a habit, or a relationship, make.

John Dalton's records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

It is not the pain from the present that is killing you, but all your repressed feelings from the past that adds weight to it.

A genealogist is one who traces your family back as far as your money will go.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

The main thing is that everything become simple, easy enough for a child to understand.

Every team is flawed. There hasn't been a truly complete team in a while.

When you read, you think, and when you smoke, you think. It's a pleasurable thing, and not a duty.

I collect cigars. I love giving 'em away to people that really enjoy 'em, and I could think of no better place than West Point!