Louis L'Amour

I start with a character and a situation, but I don't know what's going to happen until I write it. Sometimes things happen that surprise me.

Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.

Dogma is invariably wrong as knowledge is always in a state of transition.

Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.

All loose things seem to drift down to the sea, and so did I.

I am somebody. I am me. I like being me. And I need nobody to make me somebody.

To exist is to adapt, and if one could not adapt, one died and made room for those who could.

If you write a book about a bygone period that lies east of the Mississippi River, then it's a historical novel. If it's west of the Mississippi, it's a western, a different category. There's no sense to it.

A wise man fights to win, but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.

Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.

I had begun reading earlier than most because my sister Emmy Lou, no doubt to keep me from bothering her, decided it was easier to teach me to read stories to myself rather than to read them to me, as she had been doing.

Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content.

Once you have read a book you care about some part of it is always with you.

No memory is ever alone; it's at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.

I'm actually writing history. It isn't what you'd call big history. I don't write about presidents and generals... I write about the man who was ranching, the man who was mining, the man who was opening up the country.

Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. In the one year during which I kept that kind of record, I read twenty-five books while waiting for people. In offices, applying for jobs, waiting to see a dentist, waiting in a restaurant for friends, many such places.

Few of us ever live in the present. We are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what has gone.

No one can get an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process.

Being scared can keep a man from getting killed and often makes a better fighter out of him.

I don't travel and tell stories, because that's not the way these days. But I write my books to be read aloud, and I think of myself in that oral tradition.

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.

To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.

The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume there is no other way, but education is available to anyone within reach of a library, a post office, or even a newsstand.

To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.

For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biography, and history offer an inexhaustible number of lives in many parts of the world, in all periods of time.

Violence is an evil thing but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for human rights then men are really in trouble.

A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination.

Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before - it takes something from him.

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. Yet that will be the beginning.

To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.

There will be a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

I think of myself... as a troubadour, a village storyteller, the guy in the shadows of the campfire.

But even the law cannot be in your bedroom at night.

He might never really do what he said, but at least he had it in mind. He had somewhere to go.

I think it's time that we have a women's show about the West. The concentration has been on the men and the Indians.

I would not sit waiting for some value tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime. ... I would make something happen.

A good beginning makes a good end.

One learns to adapt to the land in which one lives.