in darkness and in hedges I sang my sour tone and all my love was howling conspicuously alone.

And you, whiner, who wastes your time Dawdling over the remorseless earth, What evil, what unspeakable crime Have you made your life worth?

And I realized that maybe none of us ever gets to choose our lives. Our only choice is to live the life that comes to us, or go down into darkness.

I've been accused of humanizing the Nazis, to which I can only say, you can't blame me for that. God did that. Go talk to him. It's a strange thing for an atheist to say.

I taught myself to name my name, To bark back, loosen love and crying; To ease my woman so she came, To ease an old man who was dying.

The sleek, expensive girls I teach, Younger and pinker every year, Bloom gradually out of reach.

The sweet reward for preparation often does not come in the youthful twenties or staid thirties. It arrives - with accrued interest - in the mature years.

Southerners have been known to stay over the Fourth and not get home before Thanksgiving. Some oldtimers take in overnight guests and keep them through three generations.

You must call up every strength you own And you can rip off the whole facial mask.

I have not learned how often I Can win, can love, but choose to die.

Hope is possible, when you decide to believe that what you are hoping for is possible.

Being in love, I find myself smiling for no reason at all...

The Sun challenges us to Shine, the Clouds remind us to Move, the Birds tell us we too can Fly and the Sky tells us that there is no limit to our Dreams and Goals.

Humans spend more time finding ways to fight and criticize who they consider a threat than actually learning how to overcome that threat.

Things are always better in the morning.

Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

I did pick up a guitar once, but the strings hurt my fingers so I put it down again.

In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress.

Faith that is not evidenced by a life of integrity is not biblical faith at all.

That is one trouble about trading on a large scale.You cannot sneak out as you can when you pike along.

I'm half-black, half-white, so I basically put it like this: I can fit in anywhere. That's why I write so many stories from so many different perspectives, because I've seen so many.