Hatchery fish have the same colours, but they always seem muted like bad reproductions of great art.

Travel spoils you for regular life.

The writer's life: Hard days, lots of work, no money, too much silence. Nobody's fault. You chose it.

Losers walking around with money in their pockets are always dangerous, not to be trusted. Some horse always reaches out and grabs them.

I walked to the lake and sat on the shore for a few minutes, just staring at the moonlight on the water. Moonlight never gets old.

Wishes don’t change the world. Only actions will do that job.

If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.

Retire within yourselves

A distinguished clergyman told me that he chose the profession of a clergyman because it afforded the most leisure for literary pursuits. I would recommend to him the profession of a governor.

You really don't do anything else in your life; it's a very little bubble that you grow up in. And you have to live in that bubble because of the intensity of the sport.

If I cannot be myself in what I write, then the whole is nothing but lies and humbug.

Darlin'...I know what you look like when you've been kissed.

Political correctness sometimes does great work when it helps equalize the playing field when it comes to language, but it does a great disservice when it tries to silence a person of color.

Maggie Shipstead's prose is so graceful and muscular, so dazzling, so sure-handed and fearless, that at times I had to remind myself to breathe. Astonish Me is a treasure of small surprises.

To be a really good historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual distinctions.