No memory is ever alone; it's at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.
Nobody got anywhere in the world by simply being content.
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.
Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.
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.
I think of myself... as a troubadour, a village storyteller, the guy in the shadows of the campfire.
Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.
To disbelieve is easy; to scoff is simple; to have faith is harder.
All loose things seem to drift down to the sea, and so did I.
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.
A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination.
Victory is won not in miles but in inches. Win a little now, hold your ground, and later, win a little more.
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.
To make democracy work, we must be a nation 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.
