Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

For a true writer, each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond attainment. He should always try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. Then sometimes, with great luck, he will succeed.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

A writer of fiction is really... a congenital liar who invents from his own knowledge or that of other men.

Time is the least thing we have of.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.

There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.

You can write any time people will leave you alone and not interrupt you. Or, rather, you can if you will be ruthless enough about it. But the best writing is certainly when you are in love.

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You're grateful for these different chances.

Courage is grace under pressure.

I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

The game of golf would lose a great deal if croquet mallets and billiard cues were allowed on the putting green.

Cowardice... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.

Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

My dad taught me how to fish. When I am stand in a trout stream now, and I have the waders on, and I've got a fly rod in my hand, or I am fishing for bass, I think of sitting in a boat with my dad. How can that be a bad experience?

I am blessed to be surrounded by the people I love. I thank them for their patience and grace.

On a day-to-day level, I love watching my kids accomplish the little things that seem trivial but are really milestones: seeing my son hit a baseball or watching my daughter draw something that actually looks like what she says she's drawing. Or hearing them say 'I love you.'

I don't think it's a healthy thing in your personal life to go around with that never-sure attitude.

My mother is a strong woman. Her strength comes from being tested by life's unpredictability. It comes from soldiering on for her children, even when she might rather have given up. I know it hasn't always come easily, but I also know it's her greatest gift.

My dad was Jewish. My mom is not. So I was not raised anything.

I can't be as open on national television as I can when I'm having dinner with friends. But that doesn't mean the type of person I am is different. My values, my dislikes, my sense of humor are the same.

I learned more from my dad by osmosis than by any talk we ever had. He was the most reliable person I've ever met.

Christmas is doing a little something extra for someone.

Jogging is very beneficial. It's good for your legs and your feet. It's also very good for the ground. If makes it feel needed.

All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.

Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.

If I were given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.

I have a new philosophy. I'm only going to dread one day at a time.

I love mankind; it's people I can't stand.

A whole stack of memories never equal one little hope.

Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement.

Decorate your home. It gives the illusion that your life is more interesting than it really is.

I think I've discovered the secret of life - you just hang around until you get used to it.

Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.

Nothing so fortifies a friendship as a belief on the part of one friend that he is superior to the other.

But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment; the one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, while the other is infinite.

One should believe in marriage as in the immortality of the soul.

The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.

If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye.

At fifteen, beauty and talent do not exist; there can only be promise of the coming woman.

Finance, like time, devours its own children.

I do not regard a broker as a member of the human race.

A young bride is like a plucked flower; but a guilty wife is like a flower that had been walked over.

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.