I think making mistakes and discovering them for yourself is of great value, but to have someone else to point out your mistakes is a shortcut of the process.

Before the war it was always the United States *are*, after the war it was the United States is... it made us an is.

The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.

If you want to study writing, read Dickens. That's how to study writing, or Faulkner, or D.H. Lawrence, or John Keats. They can teach you everything you need to know about writing.

People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.

When you grow up in a totally segregated society, where everybody around you believes that segregation is proper, you have a hard time. You can't believe how much it's a part of your thinking.

A university is just a group of buildings gathered around a library.

As a Southerner I would have to say that one of the main importances of the War is that Southerners have a sense of defeat which none of the rest of the country has.

I abhor the idea of a perfect world. It would bore me to tears.

Longevity conquers scandal every time.

North was only a direction indicated by a compass--if a man had one, that is, for otherwise there was no north or south or east or west; there was only the brooding desolation.

Failure is a mindset, not a circumstance. I let my experiences strengthen me. You think I fell on my face, but I’m down here doing pushups.

They are my baby Keelans!

You do not have an inferior function, it has you.

I really never thought I was that good at film. And honestly still don't. My strength is language. My background is monologues and a certain kind of Brechtian spin on theater.

At the same time all this was happening, there was a folk song revival movement goingon, so the commercial music industry was actually changed by the Civil Rights Movement.

My life isn't focused on results. My life is really focused on the process of doing all the things I'm doing, from work to relationships to friendships to charitable work.

When they took me to do the camera test for the vampire make up, after they put the prosthetic on, I went though the entire process, I went back to my trailer and I looked in the mirror and I smiled.

Often miracles are happening right in front of our eyes, but we think they should look different, so we miss them though they're right there.

I think the key to passion, to zeal, is gratitude. Or to put it another way, the fuel to motivate is gratitude.