“An excuse is what you make after the deed is done, while a justification is what you offer before.”

“You never do find out what makes you tick, and after a while it's unimportant.”

“What has occurred over the course of the last few centuries is a growing (but by no means universal or certain) recognition that science gets the job done, while religion makes excuses. Sometimes they are very pretty excuses that capture the imagination of the public, but ultimately, when you want to win a war or heal a dying child or get rich from a discovery or explore Antarctica, you turn to science and reason, or you fail.”

“So after a while, if people won't accept your excuses, you stop looking for them.”

“To write a novel, you begin with what you can see and then you add what came before and what came after.

… You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.”

“Nobody can hinder you from doing what you want, if that's what you set your mind to. You can always find a hook to hang excuses on, but they're only excuses. You don't have anyone to blame but yourself. Nobody else makes you fail.”

“Doing what needs to be done may not make you happy, but it will make you great.”

“What you do in this world is a matter of no consequence. The question is what can you make people believe you have done.”

“You get what you give, but also what you're willing to take. The night before, I'd offered up my hand. Now, if I held on, there was no telling what it was possible to recieve in return.”

“To what extent you can, avoid bad deeds, even if everybody takes you as the agent of bad deeds.”