In the first place you can be so absolutely honest and so absolutely wrong at the same time that I think it is better to be a combination of cautious and polite

You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s sufferings and not your own.

You shall know the truth, and it will make you odd.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

...you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it.

What people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

[To] know oneself is, above all, to know what one lacks. It is to measure oneself against Truth, and not the other way around. The first product of self-knowledge is humility . . .

It is the business of the artist to uncover the strangeness of truth

I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

This poem was meant to be unwritten. But I am writing it now and have thereby changed destiny.

The greatest obsession is I believe in myself.

only full it will be that sees white and call it black

I tell him about ... Jack and Annabel, smart and ready and I'm wondering where all that smart comes from and I figure some from parents, some from school, and some from a place inside you.

It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me.

Good leaders being scarce, following yourself is allowed.

I see history as really cyclical in terms of the intense idealism, and the desire to create a better life outside of societal norms.

Taigs don't pay rates.

There is no role I cannot play except a midget.

The goal should be to build a sustainable lifestyle business that does good for employees and customers - and that steadily builds wealth.