What I still ask for daily-for life as long as I have work to do, and work as long as I have life.

Southerners ask intimate questions in the way monkeys groom each other for lice, not to pry but to make you feel cared for.

Strength just comes in one brand - you. Stand up at sunrise and meet what they send you and keep your hair combed

The only thing more destructive than a tornado is a family.

Stand up at sunrise and meet what they send you.

Life is short and often stingy; feast the heart with what it craves, short of cruelty, and let the world wonder.

The sound of story is the dominant sound of our lives.

Cities are the least permanent things in our civilization.

As a child I thought it was very boring when I had to sit with [my mother] on the city streets, but the time sank deep and surfaced later.

Writing is a fearsome but grand vocation—potentially healing but likewise deadly. I wouldn’t trade my life for the world.

The death of every art form seems imminent at least once in every century; but while the very funeral arrangements go forward, some child is born who is Michelangelo, Picasso, Yeats.

Your physical appearance alone could capture their eyes, but might not steal their hearts.

the worst wars are religious wars between sects of the same religion or civil wars between brothers of the same race.

In every thing that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world.

Progress is possible only if we train ourselves to think about programs without thinking of them as pieces of executable code.

Got a new pup. He is half griffon. The other half is mistake.

I understand everybody in this country doesn't agree with the decisions I've made. And I made some tough decisions. But people know where I stand.

The curse of covetousness is that it destroys manhood by substituting money for character.

Well, what now? You have no job. I have no job. Wanna play Jenga?

I was in a beauty contest once. I not only came in last, I was hit in the mouth by Miss Congeniality.

Once one is beyond a certain level of commitment to the sport, life begins to seem an allegory of rowing rather than rowing an allegory of life.