I was always my own teacher.

A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.

My continuing passion is to part a curtain, that invisible veil of indifference that falls between us and that blinds us to each other's presence, each other's wonder, each other's human plight.

Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers.

Insight doesn't happen often on the click of the moment, like a lucky snapshot, but comes in its own time and more slowly and from nowhere but within.

No art ever came out of not risking your neck.

it doesn t matter if it takes a long time getting there; the point is to have a destination.

The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order the continuous thread of revelation.

We are the breakers of our own hearts

People are mostly layers of violence and tenderness wrapped like bulbs, and it is difficult to say what makes them onions or hyacinths.

Stop chasing people who keep running away from your presence, because even if you succeed in catching them, sooner or later they would run away.

Most women don't want to take the time to figure out their style. It's okay to experiment a little bit, but don't get too far from what looks good on you.

Every breakup is an opportunity to do it right the next time.

They kept on hollering, and I simply had to put my foot down. I said, 'I'm the governor and I say the ignorant in this state have to learn, blacks as well as whites.' And they learned.

You shouldn't go to college unless God has definitely called you to go.

Being a good songwriter means paying attention and sticking your hand out the window to catch the song on the way to someone else's house!

In Africa I discovered what the true purpose of a musician is. We are historians, and it is our purpose to tell the people the true story of our past, and to extend a better vision of the future.

I really kind of liked the fluidity and not really being tied down. I saw the kind of people that were tenured and what happened to them there and I thought it was kind of death, really.

What a childhood I had. My parents sent me to a child psychiatrist. The kid didn't help me at all.

Keep your hands open, and all the sands of the desert can pass through them. Close them, and all you can feel is a bit of grit.