Mom was the greatest influence of my childhood. She wanted to save me from the vice, lust, and drinking that was all about me.

Basically there is no difference between whites and blacks, browns and yellows. I decided to think no more of people as Northerners and Southerners.

Whenever I played Columbus, Ohio, I dropped in to see my close friend, a medium who had mysterious powers. Her Indian guide was Mohawk.

We are all gifted. That is our inheritance.

We never had a bathtub. Mom would bathe me in the wooden or tin washtub in the kitchen, or in a big lard can.

I am somebody cause God don't make no junk

Many people know how to criticize, but few know how to praise.

Only those who are being burned know what fire is like.

Today or any day that phone may ring and bring good news.

There was one emotional outlet my people always had when they had the blues. That was singing.

All the men in my life have been two things: an epic and an epidemic.

I love you the way a knife loves a heart, the way a bomb loves a crowd, the way your mother warned you about, essentially.

A scar had been beaten into his mind which would only heal by experience.

I have made six big home moves in my life and I have never lost money on one I have lived in.

I just want to make different movies. I want them to be things that I care about and not to repeat myself.

I'm very lucky because I love fruit and to this day, that has saved me because I'd much rather have fruit than cookies.

I hated the idleness, the stupidity, the respectability, the petty unselfishness.

Good-bye, Graystripe. I love you. Take care of our kits.

A man does not have himself killed for a half-pence a day or for a petty distinction. You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him

If I had to embrace a definition of success, it would be that success is making the best choices we can ... and accepting them.

The more improbable the message, the less "compressible" it is, and the more bandwidth it requires. This is Shannon's point: the essence is its improbability.