When confronted with two alternatives, life and death, one is to choose death without hesitation.

A warrior is worthless unless he rises above others and stands strong in the midst of a storm.

To give a person an opinion one must first judge well whether that person is of the disposition to receive it or not.

Human life is truly a short affair. It is better to live doing the things that you like.

Light matters should be dealt with seriously. Serious matters should be dealt with lightly.

The way of the Samurai is found in death.

Bushido is realised in the presence of death. In the case of having to choose between life and death you should choose death. There is no other reasoning.

In the eyes of mercy, no one should have hateful thoughts. Feel pity for the man who is even more at fault. The area and size of mercy is limitless.

Go ahead and gamble a lie. A person who will not tell you seven lies within a hundred yards is useless as a man.

The end is important in all things.

One should make his decisions within the space of seven breaths.

Magic and miracle they are nothing but manipulation of sight and heart.

Osama bin Laden has ten look-alikes to fool us Americans. Ten look-alikes, and he's married to five of them.

When you fall in love, it is spring no matter when. Leaves falling make no difference, they are from another season.

My advice would be to write -never to stop writing, to keep it up all the time, to be painstaking about it, to write until you begin to write.

I need to smell its smells, to hear its sounds, to see food in a pot that simmers, bubbles, sizzles. I enjoy the physical involvement of stirring, turning, poking, mashing, scraping.

As a general rule, people tend to do best what they enjoy doing most.

I was walking an average of about two and a half miles a day, which is still more than most Americans. Most Americans don't even walk that.

There's truth even in tainted knowledge, if one reads carefully.

I think if you're feeling great about where you are, everything that led up to it had to be terrific.

I've been a practicing alcoholic and drug addict for most of my life.