“Fear has made them sloppy. The world teeters at a precipe. All scared to take a step in case they put a foot into empty air. The instinct of self-preservation. It can destroy a man's efficiency.”

“If you want to be a new man you have to stay in new places, and do new things, with people who never knew you before. If you go back to the same old ways, what else can you be but the same old person?”

“One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things.”

“Enough pain makes a coward of anyone.”

“It was a look that gave her a tingle, all right, but not in a good way. In that look she saw her silly bloody hopes as twisted and broken as shed left that Lowlanders arm, and it was no ones fault ...”

“A friendship between a man and a woman was what you called it when one had been pursuing the other for a long time and never gotten anywhere.”

“It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.”

“. . . in no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delus...”

“I am a person before I am anything else. I never say I am a writer. I never say I am an artist...I am a person who does those things.”

“The point, I decided, wasn't to have the autobiography or even the memories. The point was who I became when I wrote.”

“The willingness to reach inside every part of yourself opens the door to total understanding. You place your entire identity on the line, not just an isolated part. This may sound daunting, but act...”

“At the end of hours of train-dreaming, we may feel we have been returned to ourselves - that is, brought back into contact with emotions and ideas of importance to us. It is not necessarily at home...”

“A writers tools are desperation, humiliation, loneliness, love, affection, heartache, happiness, glee, defeat, victory, setbacks, and a desire for personal redemption. People with the experience to...”

“A writer’s tools are desperation, humiliation, loneliness, love, affection, heartache, happiness, glee, defeat, victory, setbacks, and a desire for personal redemption. People with the experience t...”