Whether a character in your novel is full of choler, bile, phlegm, blood or plain old buffalo chips, the fire of life is in there, too, as long as that character lives.

Probably the most honest "self-made person" ever was the one we heard say: "I got to the top the hard way - fighting my own laziness and ignorance every step of the way."

Aphorism, n.: A concise, clever statement you don’t think of until too late.

We pick bygone time up by the handfuls and, like clay, see if it feels right and then form it into stories about the past.

For every time we regret keeping still, there are about ten times we regret speaking up.

Too often we seek justice for just us.

you come to understand that history might be, as Thomas Carlyle put it, “a distillation of rumor, ” or, as Napoleon said, “a set of lies generally agreed upon

Oh God, I'm miss­ing the gene which makes you grow up and buy a flat in Streatham and start visiting Homebase every weekend. Everyone's moving on without me, into a world I don't understand.

I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

Some of the environmental lobbyists of the Western nations are the salt of the earth, but many of them are elitists.

I do remember, as a child, that I always imagined, when I was maybe 6 or 7, my fantasy was that everywhere I went I was being followed by an invisible film crew.

I was a street performer for two years.

Second-rate knowledge, and middling talents, carry a man farther at courts, and in the busy part of the world, than superior knowledge and shining parts.

I don't know of a single foreign product that enters this country untaxed, except the answer to prayer.

I believe there's no proverb but what is true; they are all so many sentences and maxims drawn from experience, the universal mother of sciences.

I think conditions on the ground determine what you need in a particular area.

There are are some dirty, greedy people out there, and unfortunately I know some.