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

There is no miraculous change that takes place in a boy that makes him a man. He becomes a man by being a man.

Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before - it takes something from him.

The only power source a book needs is you. If you have to leave for a few minutes you have not lost the story. It is waiting for you when you return. You can pick up a book and resume reading at any time, after a few minutes, a few days, even a few years. A television picture or a movie might be lost forever, but your book is waiting.

Our libraries are not cloisters for an elite. They are for the people, and if they are not used, the fault belongs to those who do not take advantage of their wealth.

What a man wants to do he generally can do, if he wants to badly enough.

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.