America is a nation with many flaws, but hopes so vast that only the cowardly would refuse to acknowledge them.

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.

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

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.

The chief character in this narrative is the Caribbean Sea, one of the world's most alluring bodies of water, a rare gem among the oceans, defined by the islands that form a chain of lovely jewels to the north and east

The extreme geniality of San Francisco's economic, intellectual and political climate makes it the most varied and challenging city in the United States.

Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors -- somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating -- none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries.