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

With my pen I have engraved warrants of citizenship in the most remote corners, for truly the world has been my home.

Rampaging horsemen can conquer; only the city can civilize.

We seek God so earnestly, Eliav reflected, not to find Him but to discover ourselves.

It took her three seconds-one, two, three-to know that her destiny required her to join this man, and his gun and his wagon, and his waiting horses. She had no conception of what was being...

Because I am for them, Commander, because their ancestors stood up to that Nazi, Bligh, just like I would be for one little Jew, terrified and hungry, crossing the Pyrenees to get away to freedom...

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

Writers turn dreams into print.

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 would be a pauper,...

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.

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

Other things being roughly equal, that man lives most keenly who lives in closest harmony with nature. To be wholly alive a man must know storms, he must feel the ocean as his home or...

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...

It may seem contradictory, but in the languid tropics one spends more time contemplating those great good things of sound and sight and smell.

[Very rich people] with brains make a great effort to hold on to every penny they have while preaching to the general population that freedom and dignity and patriotism are possible only under their protection;...

a soldier lives always for the next battle, because he knows that before it arrives impossible changes can occur in his favor.

Being goal-oriented instead of self-oriented is crucial. I know so many people who want to be writers. But let me tell you, they really don’t want to be writers. They want to have been writers....

Only the rocks live forever, Gray Wolf said.

At times, working in big cities far from nature, I have been sick with nesomania, and I think the reason is this: On the islands one has both the time and the inclination to communicate...

The really great writers are people like Emily Bronte who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

The South Pacific is not a paradise, in the sense that Eden wasn’t either. There are always apples and snakes. But it is a wonderful place to live. The green vales of Tahiti, the hills...

¦ Although most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors — somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating — none of us can name two French...

What did I learn in my travels? In whatever foreign country I visited I met dreamers who longed to reach America and its promise of an enriched life so I knew we had a country...

The permanent temptation of life is to confuse dreams with reality. The permanent defeat of life comes when dreams are surrendered to reality.