Contempt is a well-recognized defensive reaction.

No matter how small you start, always dream big.

We're not going to have the America that we want until we elect leaders who are going to tell the truth - not most days, but every day.

I've never had a problem with drugs. I've had problems with the police.

After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.

When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you.

Music is a language that doesn’t speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it’s in the bones, it’s in the bones.

I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.

Home Economics stands for the ideal home life for today unhampered by the traditions of the past and the utilization of all the resources of modern science to improve home life.

I've been tested by fire, and the fire lost.

If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.

Sublime natures are seldom clean!

The imperative is to define what is right and do it.

Now I write often. I decided that I need to write for myself - I can't really direct other people's material.

Imperialism and slavery are no white male monopoly, but are everywhere from Egypt, Assyria, and Persia to India, China and Japan.

Let thy mind still be bent, still plotting, where, And when, and how thy business may be done. Slackness breeds worms; but the sure traveller, Though he alights sometimes still goeth on.

The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.

Global warming threatens the survival of our species.

We want to make it socially, morally, politically and religiously unacceptable to have substandard housing and homelessness.

The only good thing ever done by a committee was the King James version.

I sometimes have birthday parties for the kids in my neighborhood and then pretend to suggest that I am going to molest them to the parents. It's a hilarious prank even though I am not a paedophile.