A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once.

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.

To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.

Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

Don't do what you can do - try what you can't do.

There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

It only takes one minute to find a really good book, but it can give you a lifetime of memories when you read a really good book that leaves you with lasting impression.

Great spirit, great-self.

In this world and the hereafter, we should not be afraid of no one but ourselves.

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.

When I haven't been working I've tried to travel a lot.

I am MacWonder one moment and MacBlunder the next.

I make a mean peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I write sets of books, but I've also written a lot of orphans.

The only time you are actually growing is when you are uncomfortable.

The dark in soul see in the universe their own shadow; the shattered spirit can only reflect external beauty in form as untrue and broken as itself.