In my time and neighborhood (and in my soul) there was only one standard by which a woman measured success: did some man want her?

A broken bone can heal, but the wound a word opens can fester forever.

Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely necessary.

It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.

A rattlesnake that doesn't bite teaches you nothing.

A religious awakening which does not awaken the sleeper to love has roused him in vain.

A taste for irony has kept more hearts from breaking than a sense of humor, for it takes irony to appreciate the joke which is on oneself.

If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.

People who keep journals have life twice

Nothing is so dear as what you're about to leave.

I've done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.

It is the photographing of ordinary things, in extraordinary light, that produces extraordinary photographs.

- You gave me a dead frog for my birthday!- To remind you we all die and end up rotting underground eaten by maggots so we should enjoy our birthdays while we have them. I found it thoughtful.

Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.'

At 18 I began painting steadily fulltime and at age 20 had my first New York show at the Macbeth Gallery.

I never get hung up on the past - the memories are too negative.

One day to see that headline, not that someone won a basketball championship, but to see that a cure for cancer has been found, will be a great day for mankind.

Sometimes a script comes along that really makes you sit up and pay attention... 'Life at These Speeds' has an emotional intensity that really kicked me in the guts.

Colonel Walker, did it ever occur to you that General Jackson is crazy?

The goal of Latin American unity is highly ephemeral. Each country has its own set of goals and very different sets of leaders.

One cannot overestimate the power of a good rancorous hatred on the part of the stupid. The stupid have so much more industry and energy to expend on hating. They build it up like coral insects.