My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.

Most of my books have been written in the form of fantasy.

After I saved some money, I quit work and went to a local college.

I decided that adventure was the best way to learn about writing.

My concern is how we learn to be genuine human beings.

It was 1943. The U.S. had already entered World War II, so I decided to join the army.

If writers learn more from their books than do readers, perhaps I may have begun to learn.

Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain, and so many others were my dearest friends and greatest teachers.

When I was discharged, I attended the University of Paris and met a beautiful Parisian girl, Janine. We soon married and eventually returned to the States.

Eventually, I was sent to Wales and Germany, and after the war, to Paris.

I loved all the world's mythologies.

My family pleaded with me to forget literature and do something sensible, such as find some sort of useful work.

After seven years of writing - and working many jobs to support my family - I finally got published.

All that writers can do is keep trying to say what is deepest in their hearts.

We learn more by looking for the answer to a question and not finding it than we do from learning the answer itself.

King Arthur was one of my heroes - I played with a trash can lid for a knightly shield and my uncle's cane for the sword Excalibur.

Using the device of an imaginary world allows me in some strange way to go to the central issues - it's one of many ways to express feelings about real people, about real human relationships.

My parents were horrified when I told them I wanted to be an author.

There's this huge number of desperate people.

I decided that adventure was the best way to learn...

A crown is more discomfort than adornment. If you have learned that you have already learned much.

A crown is a pitiless master harsher than the staff of a pig keeper while a staff bears up a crown weighs down beyond the strength of any man to wear it lightly.

Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. Its a way of understanding it.

It is harsh enough for each man to bear his own wound. But he who leads bears the wounds of all who follow him.

The only thing a cat worries about is what's happening right now. As we tell the kittens, you can only wash one paw at a time.

Seize the day, whatever's in it to seize, before something comes along and seizes you.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

We're parents first, and once you have kids, everybody knows that you have priority lists. Number one is your family and everything else just kind of finds its place.

I have a project at HBO and one at the Family Channel coming that are being looked at. Aside from that I am not doing much more than playing golf and some skiing.

I didn't tell anybody about my plan because I was convinced my family or friends would stop me. I didn't think much about what would happen afterwards.

You know raising a family in the lifestyle of a professional athlete can be very difficult.

I love to see my family together. That's what life is about. It's about family.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

It was an idea we had when Al was in the Senate - to organize and moderate an annual conference that would look at government policy through the lens of the family to help identify ways that the family can be supported and strengthened.

Even though we were all celebrities to a certain extent, we all looked at each other as family.

The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.

A growing awareness of the depth of popular attachment to the family has led some liberals to concede that family is not just a buzzword for reaction.

I love my family.

I have other obligations now - the show, my family, my life... though I know that without my sobriety I wouldn't have any of those things.

When they were small and my wife really had no other responsibilities, except taking care of the family and all of us, it wasn't that big a deal. It was fun. Hey, we're going to Moscow. We're going to Italy. We're going to Toronto. We're going to New York.

I miss my family, and I like being a tourist when I go back.

I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business, but my family keeps me grounded.

The last three decades have seen the collapse of the family wage system.

I have continued systematically to study the Book of Mormon and Bible to understand even more deeply what God expects of me and my family while on this earth.

When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way.

Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.

When I said I was going to audition for a film, I got a hearty laugh from all my family.

And partly, the worst thing you could do in my family was need something from someone. So physical strength represented an avenue of self-sufficiency to me.