I am somebody. I am me. And I don't need anybody to make me somebody.

For a man with an education the world is a wide place and the opportunities are many

Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.

Any man can shoot a gun, and with practice he can draw fast and shoot accurately, but that makes no difference. What counts is how you stand up when somebody is shooting back at you.

A man shares his days with hunger, thirst, and cold, with the good times and the bad, and the first part of being a man is to understand that.

A journey is time suspended.

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.