Being scared can keep a man from getting killed, and often makes a better fighter out of him.

No memory is ever alone; it's at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.

Do you wish to learn? There are books that can teach you anything, and there is no cheaper form of education, nor one whose effects are more lasting. My education came from books, and they have been my companions by many campfires, in bunkhouses, ships' forecastles, in hotels and on planes. No matter where you find me, I am never far from a book.

Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.

A television picture or a movie might be lost forever, but your book is waiting.

Neither drink [coffee or tea] was known in Frankish lands, but seated in the coffeehouses, I drank of each at various times, twirling my moustache and listening with attention to that headier draught, the wine of the intellect, that sweet and bitter juice distilled from the vine of thought and the tree of man's experience.

...Proximity to a noose danger and death ... can make man or woman appreciate things.