It's not when you realize that nothing can help you — religion, pride, anything — it's when you realize that you don't need any aid.

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.

To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.

Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

Don't do what you can do - try what you can't do.

There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

She was exactly right and wrong in the perfect sort of way. This kiss would be the first of many, she was the type of girl I would desperately fight for to stay.

My optimism? Where I grew up our principal cultural expression was the funeral. Whatever keeps me going, it isn't optimism.

To burn always with this hard gemlike flame. To maintain this ecstasy is success in life.

I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done

I like stories with a collision of disparate tones. Look at 'Shameless' or 'House of Lies'. They go from big, silly, and comedic to very real dramatic moments in the wink of an eye.

Some men succeed by what they know; some by what they do; and a few by what they are.

You are a good young man," she said. "But I do not like husbands. I will never have another.

You can't just give a speech and expect people to fall down and agree with you.

It's hard to compare actors from different generations.

I know that I have a special stomach.