If you want to study writing, read Dickens

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 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.

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

Longevity conquers scandal every time.

I want kids of this generation to see that everything is cool, that there's some kind of unity in hip-hop. We all found something that's really important to us, and music is all we've really got.

Today she is the lady of death, which I believe is the best muse to have.

The danger of parachuting young enthusiastic scientists into a flower bed of selected data and fully bloomed conceptions should be underestimated.

Liverpool Football Club is the heartland of football folklore

Asthma research is a lot better and new medicines are always coming out to help young people.

Certainly take the advice of others but always, always be yourself.

Music to me is so internal. It's physical and it's emotional. Whereas fashion is so much about the external that it's almost like a break. It's not inner turmoil. It's total escapism.

Your enemy is still yourself. You don't have enemies. They may be self-styled. I have plenty of self-styled enemies. I don't wish them harm.

If a thing's worth doing, it's worth overdoing. (Lazarus Long)

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism. The rest, called literature, is a dossier of human imbecility for the guidance of future professors.