“The historian will tell you what happened. The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”

“The difference between a novelist and a historian is this: that the former tells lies deliberately and for the fun of it; the historian tells lies in his simplicity and imagines he is telling the truth.”

“Beethoven tells you what it's like to be Beethoven and Mozart tells you what it's like to be human. Bach tells you what it's like to be the universe.”

“The news isn't there to tell you what happened. It's there to tell you what it wants you to hear or what it thinks you want to hear.”

“It's wonderful to be able to read a newspaper that tells you what's going to happen--not just what's already happened. Anybody can tell you what's already happened, but the Bible tells you what's going to happen. Newspapers are not really newspapers; they're history papers. They tell you what's already happened--past news. But God has given us a lot of later news about today, the time in which we're living right now, and what's going to happen next. So the Bible is not just a history book, it's a news book. It not only tells you about yesterday, it also tells you about tomorrow.”

“Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular.”

“The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened.”

“This is what happens when you get old. You start thinking. Worse, you start telling everybody what you think.”

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”

“I know I can't tell you what it's like to be gay. But I can tell you what it's not. It's not hiding behind words, Mama. Like family and decency and Christianity.”