Our American heritage is greater than any one of us. It can express itself in very homely truths; in the end it can lift up our eyes beyond the glow in the sunset skies.

Say this much for big league baseball - it is beyond question the greatest conversation piece ever invented in America.

To learn to get along without, to realize that what the world is going to demand of us may be a good deal more important than what we are entitled to demand of it - this is a hard lesson.

Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination, and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made

There is a rowdy strain in American life, living close to the surface but running very deep. Like an ape behind a mask, it can display itself suddenly with terrifying effect.

Progress is the sum of small victories won by individual human beings.

A certain combination of incompetence and indifference can cause almost as much suffering as the most acute malevolence.

Here was the greatest and most moving chapter in American history, a blending of meanness and greatness, an ending and a beginning. It came out of what men were, but it did not go as men had planned.

And there is the headlight, shining far down the track, glinting off the steel rails that, like all parallel lines, will meet in infinity, which is after all where this train is going.

History does not usually make real sense until long afterward.

Even the most painstaking history is a bridge across an eternal mystery.

Liberalism is not fond of fun, or at least of many forms of fun that many people like.

Ruby describes the decorations at the banquet. 'It was like little gardens of rhapsody on every table. It was divine.

Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.

I have no other view than to promote the public good, and am unambitious of honors not founded in the approbation of my Country.

I've always been the kind of woman who had a man in her life even when he was the wrong man.

I read my books out loud to myself because of the demands of the story and demands of language.

A lack of communication leaves fear and doubt.

I get atomic, hypo-galactical... Word to mom, I'm in my own world. Galaxy rays? Powerful.

For me, I always have to establish a reality for the character. In very actor-y terms, you just have to understand his reality.

The biggest fear that I have is settling into too many set behavior patterns, where I feel like I'm no longer exploring possibilities anymore.