Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something(All The King's Men)

The lack of a sense of history is the damnation of the modern world.

Everything seems an echo of something else.

I think the greatest curse of American society has been the idea of an easy millennialism -- that some new drug, or the next election or the latest in social engineering will solve everything.

Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

The image that fiction presents is purged of the distractions, confusions and accidents of ordinary life.

Historical sense and poetic sense should not, in the end, be contradictory, for if poetry is the little myth we make, history is the big myth we live, and in our living, constantly remake.

Goodness . . . You got to make it out of badness . . . Because there isn't anything else to make it out of.

The poem . . . is a little myth of man's capacity of making life meaningful. And in the end, the poem is not a thing we see-it is, rather, a light by which we may see-and what we see is life.

It is human defect — to try to know oneself by the self of another.

You have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of.

it tooklosing himto finally findmyself.It tooklosing hima second timeto be sureof myself.thatwas myfirst actofself-love.

I love who I am. I am beautiful creation of God.

Minds like bodies will often fall into a pimpled ill-conditioned state from mere excess of comfort.

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

There can be no question, however, that prolonged commitment to mathematical exercises in economics can be damaging. It leads to the atrophy of judgement and intuition. . .

Never mistake activity for achievement.

I don't fake my music. If I want to be known for anything it's for creating honest music. Noting is fake or will ever be fake about the lyrics and pain in my music. My music I live it.

My musical style was developed basically by listening to music. The music I like helped to mold my style. I used to listen to the majority of down south music when I was a shorty coming up.

I find a fascination, like the fascination for the moth of a star, in those who hold aloof and disdain me.

I can't go long without you either, Eva. You're an addiction...my obsession.