If you get down about the state of American culture, just remember there are still more public libraries in this country than there are McDonalds.

To write is to think, and to write well is to think well.

He had kept his head, kept his health and his strength, bearing up under a weight of work and worry that only a few could have carried.

Read. Read. Read. Read. Read great books. Read poetry, history, biography. Read the novels that have stood the test of time. And read closely.

Every book is a new journey. I never felt I was an expert on a subject as I embarked on a project.

Why limit yourself to the experience of your own relatively brief time on earth, according to your biological clock, when the whole realm of the human experience reaching back infinitely far is available to you?

Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, 'Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country actually.