“We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.”
― The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
― The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967
“Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That's why it's so hard."
(Interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole, Humanities, July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)”
―
(Interview with NEH chairman Bruce Cole, Humanities, July/Aug. 2002, Vol. 23/No. 4)”
―
“Profound silence would brood over the valley, even weighing down our spirits with indefinable heaviness. There can be no other place in the world where man feels himself so alone, so isolated, so completely ignored by nature, so incapable of entering into communion with her”
― Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time
― Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time
“W. H. Auden once suggested that to understand your own country you need to have lived in at least two others. One can say something similar for periods of time: to understand your own century you need to have come to terms with at least two others. The key to learning something about the past might be a ruin or an archive but the means whereby we may understand it is--and always will be--ourselves.”
― The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
― The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
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