We risk great peril if we kill off this spirit of adventure, for we cannot predict how and in what seemingly unrelated fields it will manifest itself. A nation that loses its forward thrust is in danger, and one of the most effective ways to retain that thrust is to keep exploring possibilities. The sense of exploration is intimately bound up with human resolve, and for a nation to believe that it is still committed to a forward motion is to ensure its continuance.

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

No man leaves where he is and seeks a distant place unless he is in some respect a failure.

Only another writer, someone who had worked his heart out on a good book which sold three thousand copies, could appreciate the thrill that overcame me one April morning in 1973 when Dean Rivers of our small college in Georgia appeared at my classroom door

You don't fight to protect warships or old men. Like the book says, you fight to save your civilization. And so often it seems that civilization is composed mainly of the things women and children want.

For this is the journey that men and women make, to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much else what they find.

If I were a young man, I would not hesitate at writing anything to get into print, except pornography.