I discuss men in a book about boys because men are the role models who either offer your son structure and inspiration, or leave him rudderless and depressed.

It was funny how dad was more honest in a book that anyone in the world could pick up and read than he could be talking to me. Or maybe it was sad. One or the other. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

While history might be full of exemplary fathers, recorded history is not where to find them.

I’m told, I’m like my father, and he was the most wonderful man. But I think he was gentler than me.

It is easier to know man in general than to understand one man in particular

It is easier to know man in general than to know one man.

A book is a good substitute for a man. Fiction, preferably.

Any man's life, told truly, is a novel...

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book. The book exists for us perchance which will explain our miracles and reveal new ones. The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered.

The difference between a Hero and an ordinary man is that when the ordinary man comes upon a flaming death swamp full of venomous dragon snakes, he turns around and goes home. The Hero strips down and goes for a swim.

i don't want to give the impression that I fault my father. I don't. The truth is that he's one of my heroes. He's monumental to me. I believed - and still do - that a man must stand in the door of his home and let the wolf get him before the wolf gets his family. The wolf never got my father or his family, and I admire Daddy's guts. He never slacked off work or lied to me or shrugged his responsibilities. He dealt with his family from a distance, but was available, when needed. Eventually I'd do the same. I don't know whether I was copying him or whether, by coincidence, my work, like Daddy's, simply kept me away. All I know is that in many ways, big and small, I've followed my father.

How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book.

People don't realize how a man's whole life can be changed by one book.

It is more vital to study men than books