Walking the streets of Charleston in the late afternoons of August was like walking through gauze or inhaling damaged silk.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

It's impossible to explain to a Yankee what 'tacky' is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.

I was born and raised on a Carolina sea island and I carried the sunshine of the low-country, inked in dark gold, on my back and shoulders.

I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.

The most powerful words in English are, 'Tell me a story.'

Here is all I ask of a book- give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word.

I stood face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before me.

Good writing ... involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.

The great teachers fill you up with hope and shower you with a thousand reasons to embrace all aspects of life.

Once an opinion is formed, there will be attachment-abhorrence. A person without opinion is also without attachment-abhorrence.

Simplicity is the spring of heart.

What I spent is gone what I kept I lost but what I gave away will be mine forever.

Poetry is the communication through words of certain experiences that can be communicated in no other way.

The environmental movement's focus on the Keystone XL pipeline issue really used to baffle me.

I was only a gun captain on the battleship Alabama for 34 months. People have called me a hero for that, but I'll tell you this - heroes don't come home. Survivors come home.

I moved here to California when I was 13 to pursue my acting career

There's nothing wrong with an actor that can't improvise, but if you're going to improvise, you gotta make sure you got people that can play the game.

A man who has spent most of his adult life trying out a series of patent medicines is always an optimist.