Life is short. People are not easy to know. They're not easy to know, so if you don't tell them how you feel, you're not going to get anywhere, I feel.

You've got to learn to leave the table When love's no longer being served".

I tell you what freedom is to me: no fear.

What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did.

You can't help it. An artist's duty, as far as I'm concerned, is to reflect the times.

You have to learn to get up from the table when love is not being served.

Talent is a burden not a joy. I am not of this planet. I do not come from you. I am not like you.

How do you explain what it feels like to get on the stage and make poetry that you know sinks into the hearts and souls of people who are unable to express it

There's no excuse for the young people not knowing who the heroes and heroines are or were.

Slavery has never been abolished from America's way of thinking.

The worst thing about that kind of prejudice... is that while you feel hurt and angry and all the rest of it, it feeds you self-doubt. You start thinking, perhaps I am not good enough.

No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

If the pulpit begins to propagate a faulty or erroneous value system, it ends up captivating the whole country, in no time like a cancer spreading throughout the body.

I want the French people to respect values that allow each individual to practice his or her faith, but in the frame of our common rules of secularism.

Intimate scenes on a movie set are just dry, bizarre things; people standing around.

You really can't take a cat and turn it into a dog, or try and get lemons off an apple tree, or what have you.

It felt good doing a physical job, and going home each evening feeling like I had really done a day's work.

Those with power are frequently least aware of -- or least willing to acknowledge -- its existence [and] those with less power are often most aware of its existence.

I realize over the years my music has started becoming more like country and it's not necessarily something I'm trying to do.

My mother was a very difficult woman to please. She was the sort of woman who thought that if I were praised I would get above myself.

What do any of us really know about love?