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

Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them.

A poet sees things in two ways: First, as a child who never saw it before, and Second, as a dying man who will never see it again.

I would suppose I learned how to write when I was very young indeed. When I read a child's book about the Trojan War and decided that the Greeks were really a bunch of frauds with their tricky horses and the terrible things they did, stealing one another's wives, and so on, so at that very early age, I re-wrote the ending of the Iliad so that the Trojans won. And boy, Achilles and Ajax got what they wanted, believe me. And thereafter, at frequent intervals, I would write something. It was really quite extraordinary. Never of very high merit, but the daringness of it was.

It is difficult to be king when the gods are changing.

As a writer I have persisted in my uncertainty, alternating between novels which could charitably be considered literature and world reporting which by another stretch of objective standards might be called history.

First buy a cowboy hat and boots. Then you're on your way to being a Texan.