A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.
Teaching is the royal road to learning.
Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures.
There are two barriers that often prevent communication between the young and their elders. The first is middle-aged forgetfulness of the fact that they themselves are no longer young. The second is youthful ignorance of the fact that the middle aged are still alive.
The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.
I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.
A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.
A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.
Memory is a magnet. It will pull to it and hold only material nature has designed it to attract.
We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.
We can love an honest rogue, but what is more offensive than a false saint?
It is very east to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.
Writing is a solitary occupation. Family, friends, and society are the natural enemies of the writer. He must be alone, uninterrupted, and slightly savage if he is to sustain and complete an undertaking.
Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.
Groan and forget it.
A big iron needle stitching the country together.
The source of one's joy is also often the source of one's sorrow.
Justice is a terrible but necessary thing.
Sleeplessness is a desert without vegetation or inhabitants.
If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.
