War so conspicuously benefits rich men and kills the poor ones.

it takes your sleeping self years to catch up to where you really are. ... when you go on a trip, in your dreams you will still be home. Then after you've come home you'll dream of where you were. It's a kind of jet lag of the consciousness.

If you never stepped on anybody's toes, you never been for a walk.

He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.

In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.

It's what you do that makes your soul.

It is true that I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.