The worst thing about war was the sitting around and wondering what you were doing morally.

Chickenshit can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war.

Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.

Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.

If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces.

i find nothing more depressing than optimism.

A more or less accurate measure of class in America is TV size: the bigger your TV, the lower your class.

Anybody who notices unpleasant facts in the have-a-nice-day world we live in is going to be designated a curmudgeon.

If we do not redefine manhood, war is inevitable.

Anyone telling about his travels must be a liar, . . . for if a traveler doesn't visit his narrative with the spirit and techniques of fiction, no one will want to hear it.

Before the development of tourism, travel was conceived to be like study, and it's fruits were considered to be the adornment of the mind and the formation of the judgment.

I like best to have one book in my hand, and a stack of others on the floor beside me, so as to know the supply of poppy and mandragora will not run out before the small hours.

I am so fidgety - I swear I have ADD - and I always need to be doing something or being outside, just playing sports.

Shortly thereafter, some friends encouraged me to try out for the Miss South Carolina World beauty pageant. To my surprise, I won - and was sent to New York City to compete nationally.

The sort of poetry I seek resides in objects man can't touch.

When you look at people who are successful, you will find that they aren't the people who are motivated, but have consistency in their motivation.

Talk about threats to national security -- how about government so big, so complicated and so unmanageable, it cant get out of its own way?

I come from a long line of generations!

I was trapped in admiration for what I had once admired, as a fly in amber remains the captive of some long-vanished pine.

Nature has a surer plan than mortals can devise.

As I have said so often before, the long memory is the most radical idea in America...