A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.

The manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.

I will undoubtedly have to seek what is happily known as gainful employment, which I am glad to say does not describe holding public office.

Washington is like a self-sealing tank on a military aircraft. When a bullet passes through, it closes up.

I learned from the example of my father that the manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.

We have actively sought and are actively seeking to make the United Nations an effective instrument of international cooperation.

The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time.

The greatest mistake I made was not to die in office.

The most important aspect of the relationship between the president and the secretary of state is that they both understand who is president.

Controversial proposals, once accepted, soon become hallowed.

It is worse than immoral, it's a mistake.

Negotiation in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.

Always remember that the future comes one day at a time.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

Negotiating in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.

If we learn the art of yielding what must be yielded to the changing present, we can save the best of the past.

Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role.

A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.

The great corrupter of public man is the ego. Looking at the mirror distracts one's attention from the problem.

No people in history have ever survived who thought they could protect their freedom by making themselves inoffensive to their enemies.

Charm never made a rooster.

Arnold Bennett was a writer I admired. He was actually taking notes at his father's deathbed.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

For a country to have a great writer is like having another government. That's why no regime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

I'm a writer who likes to be influenced.

In relation to a writer, most readers believe in the Double Standard: they may be unfaithful to him as often as they like, but he must never, never be unfaithful to them.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer.

Every sentence has a truth waiting at the end of it and the writer learns how to know it when he finally gets there.

It's essential not to have an ideology, not to be a member of a political party. While the writer can have certain political views, he has to be careful not to have his hands tied.

I was never really a writer, I was always more of a performer.

Without books I would not have become a vivacious reader, and if you are not a reader you are not a writer.

Well see, I'm a good enough writer that not everybody in my books talks exactly like I do.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

Here I am, where I ought to be. A writer must have a place where he or she feels this, a place to love and be irritated with.

Nowadays I'm not even sure if newspapers take into account whether a person is a good writer.

Remember Graham Green's dictum that childhood is the bank balance of the writer? I think that all writers feel alienated. Most of us go back to an alienated childhood in some way or another. I know that I do.

You know, Mamet is not a huge writer of female parts. Most of his movies don't even have women in them, so I'm lucky I'm in it at all.

A writer should get as much education as possible, but just going to school is not enough; if it were, all owners of doctorates would be inspired writers.

I am a writer. I could not afford to take 15 months off from my writing career to play detective.

In the theater, characters have to cut the umbilical cord from the writer and talk in their own voices.

I knew I wasn't a baseball writer. I was scared to death. I really was afraid to talk to players, and I didn't want to go into the press box because I thought I was faking it.

A good short-story writer has an instinct for sketching in just enough background to ground the specific story.

The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that does not require his attention.

I think if I had been writing fiction, where the work is entirely dependent on the writer's creativity and the potential directions the narrative might take are infinite, I might have frozen.

The writer who can't do his job looks to his editor to do it for him, though he won't dream of sharing his royalties with that editor.

The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major.