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

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.

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.

I use the grotesque the way I do because people are deaf and dumb and need help to see and hear.

I thank God for my handicaps for through them I have found myself my work and my God.

Painting is a science, and should be pursued as an inquiry into the laws of nature.

The hard part about living in the present is it forces you to abandon hope for the future. Thanks for nothing, now.

If America can have a great relationship with Russia and with China and with all countries, I'm all for that. That would be a tremendous asset.

Don't look down on them for looking down on us. Look at them, instead, as friends we don't know yet and who don't yet know what they are missing in not knowing us.

Robert Kennedy identified with people, not data, or institutions, or theories. Poverty was a specific black face for him, not a manila folder full of statistics.

Never limit yourself, never be satisfied, and smile-it's free!

I was the biggest George Harrison fanatic in the world. He was raised Catholic; my parents are both ex-clergy, so I was raised Catholic, and I admired how he used his faith.

Being always overavid, I demand from those I love a love equal to mine, which, being balanced people, they cannot supply.

Public offices were not made for private convenience.