I do believe that everyone growing up faces differential opportunities. With me, it was books and travel and some good teachers.

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.

I have only one bit of advice to beginning writers: be sure your novel is read by Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Creative geniuses are a slap-happy lot. Treat Them with respect.

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.

I've spent my life trying to be better than I was, and I am a brother to all who share the same aspiration.

Every animal that walks the earth, or swims, or flies is precious beyond description, something so rare and wonderful that it equals the stars or the ocean or the mind of man.