I have never felt that the one thing that I am 'known for' is what I am.

I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.

Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.

No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming.

Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul.

I don’t need a certain number of friends, just a number of friends I can be certain of.

Every small positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future.

In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they're still beautiful.

'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.

We talk so abstractly about poetry because all of us are usually bad poets.

They (the blacks) had no right which the white man was bound to respect.

You can't kill it with goodbye; It always finds a place to hide inside your heart for your whole life. Love is never-ending.

Rules are foolish, arbitrary, mindless things that raise you quickly to a level of acceptable mediocrity, then prevent you from progressing further.

When I started out jumping around with a tennis racket, I never thought I would end up on a list of the best guitar players in the world. It makes me feel proud of the hard work I've put in.

the power of radio is not that it speaks to millions, but that it speaks intimately and privately to each one of those millions.

Hardly any animal can look as deeply disappointed as a dog to whom one says "no."

I don't wake up in the morning and say, wow I've got a great idea for a story. But I sit down, and I figure well, let's see.

Better to listen to the gospel than to a mortal leader.

A favorite cast? Lisa Kudrow, Anthony Hopkins, Gene Hackman, Morgan Freeman, and my wife.