Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.

In dealing with a man who thinks you are a fool, it is good sometimes to remind him that you know what he knows but have chosen to appear foolish for the sake of peace.

There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.

People say that if you find water rising up to your ankle, that's the time to do something about it, not when it's around your neck.

Become familiar with your home, but know also about your neighbors. The young man who never went anywhere thinks his mother is the greatest cook.

The damage done in one year can sometimes take ten or twenty years to repair.

When brothers fight to death a stranger inherit their father’s estate

If you only hear one side of the story, you have no understanding at all.

One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.

As long as one people sit on another and are deaf to their cry, so long will understanding and peace elude all of us.

The world is like a Mask dancing. If you want to see it well, you do not stand in one place.

Race prejudice is not only a shadow over the colored — it is a shadow over all of us, and the shadow is darkest over those who feel it least and allow its evil effects to go on.

When I was at drama school I wanted to do classical theatre. It just so happened that I did a film when I came out and I moved that way.

A ship in port is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.

I think a lot of young aspiring writers get misdirected; they think 'I ought to write this, even though I enjoy reading that'. What you have to do is write what you enjoy reading.

For me, it's either you're part of creation or you're part of destruction. It's inexplicable; it's like breathing, and I can't imagine not doing it.

The summer that I was ten - Can it be there was only one summer that I was ten? It must have been a long one then.

Forests are the world's air-conditioning system-the lungs of the planet-and we are on the verge of switching it off.

Love is not manageable, it is simply something that happens, and the moment you try to manage it everything misfire.

This is the great challenge: to maintain passion for the everyday routine and the endlessly repeated act, to derive deep gratification from the mundane.

If I needed to record, I'd head to the coast or Nashville, one or the other.