A man who says he has never been scared is either lying or else he's never been any place or done anything.

Sometimes we have the dream but we are not ourselves ready for the dream. We have to grow to meet it.

Books are the building blocks of civilization and a people without books are a people without history, a people with no story older than the tales of the oldest man or woman.

The thieves and killers are goin' to have guns, so if the honest men don't have 'em they just make it easier for the vicious.

... the mind must be prepared for knowledge as one prepares a field for planting, and a discovery made too soon is no better than a discovery not made at all.

No one can get an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process.

If you write a book set in the past about something that happened east of the Mississippi, it's a 'historical novel.' If you write about something that took place west of the Mississippi, it's a 'Western'- and somehow regarded as a lesser work. I write historical novels about the frontier.