You don't need to know who's playing on the White House tennis court to be a good president
Don't dip your beard in the foam, Father!" They cried to Thorin. "It is long enough without watering it!
Living by faith includes the call to something greater than cowardly self-preservation.
A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it.
For if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomable at the foundations of the Earth.
It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end… because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing… this shadow. Even darkness must pass.
I am dreading the publication, for it will be impossible not to mind what is said. I have exposed my heart to be shot at.
In a novel, the author gives the leading character intelligence and distinction. Fate goes to less trouble: mediocrities play a part in great events simply from happening to be there.
As soon as I began to talk to Dalai Lama, I realized that Chinese and Tibetans from his point of view are mostly the same. And as he pointed out during the recent disturbances, the Chinese are suffering under a tough government much as the Tibetans are.
Since I spend such a long time making each book, I only choose books that I'm really interested in and that I really love.
So if I keep making mistakes on Broadway or tape or film, producing, directing or acting, I can go along and do it - so long as I'm not investing too much capital in these things.