“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home.”

“I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.”

“I am a humanist because I think humanity can, with constant moral guidance, create reasonably decent societies. I think that young people who want to understand the world can profit from the works ...”

“Public libraries have been a mainstay of my life. They represent an individual's right to acquire knowledge; they are the sinews that bind civilized societies the world over. Without libraries, I w...”

“I wondered how a man ever got an English girl into bed. What did they do with her hockey stick?”

“The South Pacific is memorable because when you are in the islands you simply cannot ignore nature. You cannot avoid looking up at the stars, large as apples on a new tree. You cannot deafen your e...”

“The physique of a Messiah. But too clever to believe in God or be convinced of his own mission. And too sensitive, even if he were convinced, to carry it out. His muscles would like to act and his ...”

“Therefore, men of Polynesia and Boston and China and Mount Fuji and the barrios of the Philippines, do not come to these islands empty-handed, or craven in spirit, or afraid to starve. There is no ...”

“The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”

“Soldiers manage by dividing themselves. They're one man in the killing, another at home, and the man that dandles his bairn on his knee has nothing to do wi' the man who crushed his enemy's throat ...”

“The world is vicious, too huge to care about even its own survival”