I realized that the worst thing that could happen to me was about to happen to me.

The coconut trees, lithe and graceful, crowd the beach like a minuet of slender elderly virgins adopting flippant poses.

Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity.

But there are no loners. No man lives in a void. His every act is conditioned by his time and his society.

A man's task is to find himself, and if he fails in this, it doesn't much matter what else he finds.

Actors who have tried to play Churchill and MacArthur have failed abysmally because each of those men was a great actor playing himself.

He [Gen. Douglas MacArthur] never went to church, but he read the Bible every day and regarded himself as one of the world's two great defenders of Christendom. (The other was the pope.)

An Edwardian lady in full dress was a wonder to behold, and her preparations for viewing were awesome.

The sum of a million facts is not the truth.

I try to be as ruthless as possible. I ask myself of each sentence, "Is it clear? Is it true? Does it feel good?" And if it's not, then I rewrite it.

His [Gen. Douglas MacArthur's] own heroes were Lincoln and Washington, and in some ways he resembled them. Like them, he was slandered and misunderstood.

Always be a seeker. Always be a giver without expecting anything in return. Remember that true joy is in the journey not the destination.

Holy Scriptures

Why do some people stop growing at age 30, just going from work to the couch and television, when others stay vibrant, curious, almost childlike into their nineties?

All creatures have a sense of territory - except children.

I'm reachable for people, I'm not out of their league. I'm just a normal girl.

I think we need to think of capitalism as a very bad way of organizing communism. Much of what we do is already communism, so just expand it.

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.

The accent of one's birthplace remains in the mind and in the heart as in one's speech.

I grasp reality, but sometimes I like to choke it into submission.

The limitations of pleasure cannot be overcome by more pleasure.