When you're safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for - whether it's a field, or a home, or a country.

The condition of leadership adds new degrees of solitariness to the basic solitude of mankind. Every order that we issue increases the extent to which we are alone, and every show of deference which is extended to us separates us from our fellows.

Hope, like faith, is nothing if it is not courageous; it is nothing if it is not ridiculous.

An incinerator is a writer's best friend.