If there is one word that describes our form of society in America, it may be the word-voluntary.

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men's skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

Lincoln was right about not fooling all the people all the time. But Republicans haven't given up trying.

Better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.

I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one's wife happy. First, let her think she's having her own way. And second, let her have it.

A man can take a little bourbon without getting drunk, but if you hold his mouth open and pour in a quart, he's going to get sick on it.

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.

Our numbers have increased in Vietnam because the aggression of others has increased in Vietnam. There is not, and there will not be, a mindless escalation.

Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact.

Just like the Alamo, somebody damn well needed to go to their aid. Well, by God, I'm going to Viet Nam's aid!

If your dream doesn't scare you, it's not big enough.

Believe me, friend Hellishnoise: the greatest events—they are not our loudest but our stillest hours.

If you have unfilled dreams and visions of greater prosperity and success tucked in a corner of your mind, don't keep them there any longer. Dare to bring them out and dust them off.

Rap is stress, but it pays great.

I felt a lot of ambivalence about going back to graduate school for a second MFA. The impulse was really the opposite from what it had been more than a decade before: I wanted to interrupt a career.

When you compete with good people, it makes everybody better.

Super confident people with no problems and great marriages and great parenting are not good entertainment.

You can't do God's work without suffering.

Smatterers in learning are the most opinionated.

Compost makes houseplants very happy.