Vanity, wounded pride, rejection, self-delusion. I could recite a litany of little pinpricks that finally produce a gaping wound. That's how marriages and friendships come apart.

If arrogance is the heady wine of youth, then humility must be its eternal hangover.

Mail from home was so important when you were traveling. It kept you in touch with the familiar, even the part you were running from.

Eighty's a landmark and people treat you differently than they do when you're seventy-nine. At seventy-nine, if you drop something it just lies there. At eighty, people pick it up for you.

Emotion seemed more valid than experience, for I had so much of the former and so little of the latter.

People who let the weak or greedy drink their blood sometimes have a need to play God.

When you get to be my age, all your friends have either died or moved to Florida.

Fear is for the old. Lack of it is one of the joys of youth.

It's especially fitting that they call a cruise ship 'she,' for she is pregnant with a thousand adult embryos who long to stay forever warm and sheltered in this great white womb.

The rush of power to the head is not as becoming as a new hat

Even angels must find their wings too heavy sometimes.

Carpe Diem - Seize the Moment. Every moment must be seized. Every little moment sets you up for the big moments. If you don't seize the small ones you won't be ready for the big ones.

If people call me Christian, not from the standpoint of religion but from the standpoint of social vision, I declare that I am a Christian.

Your life is your statement to the world representing your values, your beliefs, your dreams.

When the writing is good and it suits your character, you don't have to memorize anything, because it just makes sense. You read it and you go, "Oh, that makes sense." And it's easy.

There's nothing colder than chemistry.

No politician is perfect. But in every election in your life, there will be one choice that is better than the others. Go out and vote for that one.

Ideals are like tuning forks: sound them often to bring your life up to standard pitch.

How is a man fortunate to live in the darkness, brother?" "Why do you wonder?" asked Blaise. "For only he who has lived in darkness truly knows and values the light.

The wages of courage is death, lad, but it's the wages of everything else, too.

Love makes money-grabbing seem contemptible; love makes class prejudice impossible; love makes selfish ambition a thing to be despised; love converts enemies into friends.