It Is Difficult To Be King When

Not Too Many People Work In A Job Where, Waiting Out There Are Three Or Four Hundred People Who Are Paid To Tear Apart What You've Done. And Often They Are Brighter Than You Are, Or They Know More About The Subject Than You Do, Or They Wish They Had Written A Book Themselves, Or Done A Lot Better. Or They Just Don't Like It! And You Have To Live With It.

I Had Learned Volleyball In The Navy, Where All The Captains And Admirals Wanted To Be Spikers, And I Found Then That A Man Who Can Subdue His Own Desires And Master The Art Of Serving Others Can Make Himself Invaluable. In Choosing Sides The Team Captain Always Chose The Good Spikers On The First And Second Choice, But Then The Spikers Would Grab His Arm And Whisper, 'take Michener.' I Was Never Chosen Lower Than Third, Because I Was Needed. I Wasn't Good, But I Was Faithful.

The Rules Seem To Be These: If You Have Written A Successful Novel, Everyone Invites You To Write Short Stories. If You Have Written Some Good Short Stories, Everyone Wants You To Write A Novel. But Nobody Wants Anything Until You Have Already Proved Yourself By Being Published Somewhere Else.

Rampaging Horsemen Can Conquer; Only The City Can Civilize.

We Risk Great Peril If We Kill Off This Spirit Of Adventure, For We Cannot Predict How And In What Seemingly Unrelated Fields It Will Manifest Itself. A Nation That Loses Its Forward Thrust Is In Danger, And One Of The Most Effective Ways To Retain That Thrust Is To Keep Exploring Possibilities. The Sense Of Exploration Is Intimately Bound Up With Human Resolve, And For A Nation To Believe That It Is Still Committed To A Forward Motion Is To Ensure Its Continuance.