A closed mind is a dying mind.

Big doesn't necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren't better than violets.

We no longer build fireplaces for physical warmth—we build them for the warmth of the soul; we build them to dream by, to hope by, to home by.

The goat's business is none of the sheep's concern.

Writers should be read but not seen. Rarely are they a winsome sight.

Living the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causing you to bump into people not going your way.

It was part of theTexas ritual? We know about champagne and caviar but we talk hog and hominy.

There are only two kinds of people in the world that really count. One kind's wheat and the other kind's emeralds.

Funny, isn't it, how your whole life goes by while you think you're only planning the way you're going to live it?

The feminine in the man is the sugar in the whisky. The masculine in the woman is the yeast in the bread. Without these ingredients the result is flat, without tang or flavor.

Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.

A life that chooses not to grow is a life that died long before it ever lived.

Once in a while, he worries, but about what? Like the scattered clouds that drift over farmland in the afternoon, that sort of anxiety is what, ultimately?

My personal wish would be to have my own TV show but, if I could have anything, my wish for the world is that no one on the Earth would ever go hungry.

Voltaire expected that within fifty years of his lifetime there would not be one Bible in the world. His house is now a distribution center for Bibles in many languages.

For me, most comedy scripts fail in the mechanical playing-out of the setup. They'll pay lip service to a moral lesson or a psychological progression.

A writer who has published as many books as I have has developed, of necessity, a hide like a rhino's, while inside there dwells a frail, hopeful butterfly of a spirit.

Things that are very significant and important to you when constructing an identity when you're younger change.

When you can be your own best audience and when your applause is the best applause you know of, youre in good shape.

Slavery is not African history. Slavery interrupted African history.

In a way, everybody is wounded from the wound of the real. This phenomenon is similar to madness. The mad person is wounded by his or her distorted relationship to the real.