“It's similar to the way you feel cuddling an infant or a kitten, when you want to squeeze it so hard you'd kill it...”

“General Peckem even recommends that we send our men into combat in full-dress uniform so they'll make a good impression on the enemy when they're shot down".”

“When John-Joseph Heller's fights became too much of a sure thing, story has it he moved on to more risky fights with grown men and even starved dogs. Though he was scarred often, he was never beaten. But as he brought each opponent to his knees, John-Joseph Heller was also growing up and his vision began to extend further than the ring.”

“Something did happen to me somewhere that robbed me of confidence and courage and left me with a fear of discovery and change and a positive dread of everything unknown that may occur.”

“So many things were testing his faith. There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it then seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven?”

“A lot of my nonfiction is very strong environmental stories - I was the first guy to write about the dolphin killings in Japan.”

“I write a lot of environmental stories.”

“Surfing is a life path. You have to really commit... You have to let go and have faith that it's gonna work out when you take off.”

“Fear is excitement without breath.”

“Destiny is a good thing to accept when it's going your way. When it isn't, don't call it destiny; call it injustice, treachery, or simple bad luck.”

“When I've had hard times in my life, the one thing about being in TV is that it's positive. I withdrew to 'Cheers,' it was familiar in that it was family. It had a kind of realistic positiveness to it.”