Let us fill a cup and drink to that most noble, ridiculous, laughable, sublime figure in our lives... The Young Man Who Was. Let us drink to his dreams, for they were rainbow-colored; to his appetites, for they were strong; to his blunders, for they were huge; to his pains for they were sharp; to his time for it was brief; and to his end, for it was to become one of us.

Illusion is an anodyne, bred by the gap between wish and reality.

I learned about machinery, I learned how men behaved under pressure, and I learned about Americans.

The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe-whether we are orthodox, conservative, reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists-we follow the Talmud. It is our common Law.

Every hour spent on the Caine was a great hour in all our lives-if you don't think so now you will later on, more and more.

The door available to everyone that can lead to happiness & success is the modest door of the public library. I found it to be so in my own life and work.

I think it's a bit like coming to the end of a book. The plot's in its thickest, all the characters are in a mess, but you can see that there aren't fifty pages left, and you know that the finish can't be far off.