J. N. Morgan Quotes

Some people want to call me an Appalachian writer, even though I know some people use regional labels to belittle.

For I never have seen, and never shall see, that the cessation of the evidence of existence is necessarily evidence of the cessation of existence.

Let me tell you about being executive producer. It is not a job, it's a title. Don't go around asking executive producers what they do because they don't do anything, alright?

...our state will not...secede. Have no doubt but Lincoln will make a good president - at least we ought to give him a fair trial.

The subtlest and most vicious aspect of women's oppression is that we have been conditioned to believe we are not oppressed, blinded so as not to see our own condition.

Carry yourself as one who will change the world, because you will.

I'm just looking always for characters that change, because I want to get better, as an actor and as a person.

If that's all he can get, and he takes it, I should say it's enough.

The Roman Catholic church... carries the immense power of very directly affecting women's lives everywhere by its stand against birth control and abortion

I've been living with myself all of my life, so I know all of me. So when I watch me, all I see is me. It's boring.

Prayer is life passionately wanting, wishing, desiring God's triumph.

Eddie [Murphy] is an icon. He's one of the reason why I started doing comedy in the beginning. He opened a lot of doors for black people.

I'm a firm believer that things happen as they should. The universe unfolds just as it's supposed to.

A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.

Waiting is worse than knowing. Grief rends the heart cleanly, that it may begin to heal; waiting shreds the spirit.

A poem in form still has to have voice, gesture, a sense of discovery, a metaphoric connection, as any poetry does.

If a poem is not memorable, there's probably something wrong. One of the problems of free verse is that much of the free verse poetry is not memorable.

I think that it's more likely that in my 60s and 70s I will be writing poetry rather than fiction.

Kids can and will thrive in the right conditions, but it all seems to start with the teachers, and giving those teachers the resources to teach- and not just to test.

I couldn't open up a magazine, you couldn't read a newspaper, you couldn't turn on the TV without hearing about the obesity epidemic in America.

The great watershed of modern poetry is French, more than English.

I can always forgive where I understand.

Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered as our prince of peace, of civil rights. We owe him something major that will keep his memory alive.

The young people have MTV and rock and roll. Why would they go to read poetry? Poetry belongs to the Stone Age. It awakens in us perceptions that go back to those times.

As you grow in this business, you learn how to do more with less.

I don't think poetry is something that can be taught. We can encourage young writers, but what you can't teach them is the very essence of poetry.

People need to start to think about the messages that they send in the movies.

I don't think the creative writing industry has helped American poetry.

I don't think American poetry has gotten any better in the past 35 years. Oddly enough, creative writing programs seem to have been good for fiction, and I would not have predicted that.

If someone tries to use you as a tool, you shouldn't mind it, because it is their choice and folly, not yours.

I learned to impersonate the kind of person that talks about poetry. It comes from teaching, I think.

I was walking an average of about two and a half miles a day, which is still more than most Americans. Most Americans don't even walk that.

Leadership starts at the top.

I like the blues a lot. I grew up on it.

Concerning the loved ones who have passed on ... do not try to make me believe that they are doing nothing, merely resting, careless ever. That would imply the condition of Hell, not of Heaven.

I've played killers, crazies, and really bad people.

In growing up, I was a child of the movies. I went to the movies every given opportunity, and that's pretty much what has informed a lot of my choices.

Marketing only really works with word of mouth.

I'm also very fond of a light business jet, so I'd like to get it before it's too late.

Some people swear there's no beauty left in the world, no magic. Then how do you explain the entire world coming together on one night to celebrate the hope of a new year?

As to writing another book on geometry [to replace Euclid] the middle ages would have as soon thought of composing another New Testament.

There are moments, above all on June evenings, when the lakes that hold our moons are sucked into the earth, and nothing is left but wine and the touch of a hand.

Art is eternal, but life is short.

I lost agents and managers because I turned down big movies that were smutty.

What I love about what digital entertainment has done is that they've given real creative freedom to folks like myself who are doing really groundbreaking stuff.

You cannot be a man of faith and live in a day. You do not live in a day if you are a man of faith.

The sacred writings excepted, no Greek has been so much read and so variously translated as Euclid.

The capacity for tears is the last demonstration of greatness.

In my career? Me. I'm the boss. I'm the end all and be all. I'm the alpha and omega in that.

The big thing is to make a winning effort. Im not obsessed with wins.