But even her demons she invested with inordinate beauty, consecrated them with the dignity of her attention.

He was one of those rare men who are capable of being fully in love only once in their lives.

There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory.

These are the quicksilver moments of my childhood I cannot remember entirely. Irresistible and emblematic, I can recall them only in fragments and shivers of the heart.

I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.

College was to teach me that I was one of life's journeymen, eager to excel but lacking the requisite gifts.

Writing poetry and reading books causes brain damage.

Losing well was a gift, but winning well is this stuff of the authentic manhood.

The desolate narrowness, the definitive thinness of experience is both the vainglory and the dead giveaway of a provincial man.

It would always be my burden, not that I lacked genius, but that I was fully aware of it.

In every southerner, beneath the veneer of clichés lies a much deeper motherlode of cliché. But even cliché is overlaid with enormous power when a child is involved.

Prayer teaches us the grace of persistent effort.

The Bush Administration and the Congress have to stop ignoring this crisis in international trade. The longer we ignore it, the more American jobs will move overseas. It's just that simple.

I don't place much faith in my intuitions, except as a starting place for designing experiments.

If we fail to act, we will end up with a different planet.

You're lucky if you find something you like to do, and it's a miracle if somebody will pay you to do it.

Once you can understand where the conversation is, who leads, the type of voices and the best place for you to add your voice, you can then start becoming a more active participant.

simple things are the most valuable and only wise people appreciate them".

The Confucian concept and Chinese ideograms for 'woman' and for 'slave' are the same.

The weird set an example for the rest of us. They raise the bar. They show us through their actions that in fact we're wired to do the new, not to comply with someone a thousand miles away.

It's so important to forgive people for their wrongs in your own life because every bit of it was for a reason-it was to form the person that you are.