A woman can look both moral and exciting... if she also looks as if it was quite a struggle.

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.

A closed mind is a dying mind.

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.

Learning can never be quantified with a flawed educational unit.

I have spent a lot of my life trying to do good and be a humanitarian, to write about difficult places, and to tell the story of oppressed peoples.

"American Idol" has done a lot for me. It's a stepping stone in my life.

I come from a large family, but I was not raised with a fortune. Something more was left me, and that was family values.

All powerful money gives birth and beauty. [Lat., Et genus et formam regina pecunia donat.]

Some of my best friends are Jewish contributors to the Democratic Party.

If we look at the complexity of the challenges facing western societies today, we see that the problems are not really about outsiders, but have their roots much closer to home.

I think every film is somehow a political film. You show a perspective and a world that has logic, and that logic is inserted into a political environment, and it means something. Yes, why not?

Labor Day is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race or nation.

You relate to a character and you find that character within yourself. It's all parts of me. I don't leave characters behind. I just let them go.