And what makes the whites who have these middle-class values have those values? Where did they get it? They didn't have these same values four hundred years, five hundred years ago.

The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that's power. Because they control the minds of the masses.

A wise man can play the part of a clown, but a clown can't play the part of a wise man.

We need more light about each other. Light creates understanding, understanding creates love, love creates patience, and patience creates unity.

When 'I' replaced with 'We', even the illness becomes wellness.

I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he's wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.

Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.

If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.

The mother is the first teacher of the child. The message she gives that child, that child gives to the world.

Read absolutely everything you get your hands on because you'll never know where you'll get an idea from.

Shall we mourn here deedless forever a shadow-folk mist-haunting dropping vain tears in the thankless sea

Thank you, " he says."Thank who?""I don't know.

Writing a novel is actually searching for victims. As I write I keep looking for casualties. The stories uncover the casual

This archaic idea - that a woman who is unmarried and childless at 30 is somehow unnatural - will probably always exist, and, like most social standards, it is ridiculous.

In whatever position you find yourself, determine first your objective.

Intention is the core of all conscious life. Conscious intention colors and moves everything.

There is a lot of money to be made in the business of secrets, of course.

The struggle with the past is not a hand-to-hand fight. The future overcomes it by swallowing it. If it leaves anything outside it is lost.

The short story, I should point out, is perforce a labor of love in today's literary world; there's precious little economic incentive to write one.

I believe that photography can only reproduce the surface of things. The same applies to a portrait. I take photographs of people the same way I would take photographs of a plaster bust.