An empty throne always tempts me.

Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily.

The reason most people fail instead of succeed is they trade what they want most for what they want at the moment.

Victory is not always winning the battle...but rising every time you fall.

Six hours' sleep for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool.

Moses has revealed the existence of God to his nation. Jesus Christ to the Roman world, Muhammad to the old continent.

If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing.

You become strong by defying defeat and by turning loss into gain and failure to success.

Until you spread your wings, you'll have no idea how far you can fly.

To have a right estimate of a man's character, we must see him in misfortune.

The purpose of religion is to keep the poor from killing the rich.

If we can teach everyone how to calm their minds, this world will see peace.

Now the bigots have to get creative. Good luck coming up with slurs for Chechens. Go back where you came from, Ushanka head.

I honestly find it easier to dance about in heels than I do to walk down the street in them.

I'm a musician. I write songs. I just hope when the day is done I've been able to tear a little corner off of the darkness.

When finger point at moon, don't look at finger or you'll miss the moon.

Since all the maids are good and lovable, from whence come the bad wives?

After the war, Prohibition was passed, and with liquor no longer legally available the nation plunged headlong into the Great Depression.

What I'm fighting for now in my work... for an expression relevant to all manner of blacks, poems I could take into a tavern, into the street, into the halls of a housing project.

When I come up against the real world, I just vacillate.

Translation is entirely mysterious. Increasingly I have felt that the art of writing is itself translating, or more like translating than it is like anything else