I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.

The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.

It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.

Men kick friendship around like a football, but it doesn't seem to crack. Women treat it like glass and it goes to pieces.

I feel we are all islands - in a common sea.

A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.

My passport photo is one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever seen- no retouching, no shadows, no flattery-just stark me.

When I cannot write a poem, I bake biscuits and feel just as pleased.

Don't wish me happiness - I don't expect to be happy it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor - I will need them all.

excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand.

Maybe he wouldn't end up the kind of man who needed to use his body for work. Maybe he'd be a new kind of black man altogether, one who got to use his mind.

My grandfather used to wear a black hat and coat. You are my children. You are my jewels. We old ones invest our future in you.

In every pang that rends the heart The Man of Sorrows had a part.

Talent survives and remains while beauty is diluted.

For example, Americans seem reluctant to take on Shakespeare because you don't think you're very good at it - which is rubbish. You're missing out here.

Bible study without Bible experience is pointless.

I've seen many politicians paralyzed in the legs as myself, but I've seen more of them who were paralyzed in the head.

Love and the hope of it are not things one can learn; they are a part of life's heritage.

We want free trade but we want free trade that is good. We want free trade that levels the playing field.