On 24 October 1944 Planet Earth was following its orbit about the sun as it has obediently done for nearly five billion years.

a soldier lives always for the next battle, because he knows that before it arrives impossible changes can occur in his favor.

I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter.

A nation becomes what its young people read in their youth. Its ideals are fashioned then, its goals strongly determined.

We are never prepared for what we expect.

I had been educated with free scholarships. I went to nine different universities, always at public expense, and when you have that experience, you are almost obligated to give it back. It's as simple as that.

I write at eighty-five for the same reasons that impelled me to write at forty-five; I was born with a passionate desire to communicate, to organize experience, to tell tales that dramatize the adventures which readers might have had. I have been that ancient man who sat by the campfire at night and regaled the hunters with imaginative recitations about their prowess. The job of an apple tree is to bear apples. The job of a storyteller is to tell stories, and I have concentrated on that obligation.