The American mind, unlike the English, is not formed by books, but, as Carl Sandburg once said to me, by newspapers and the Bible.

Genius and virtue are to be more often found clothed in gray than in peacock bright.

Magnanimous people have no vanity, they have no jealousy, and they feed on the true and the solid wherever they find it. And, what is more, they find it everywhere.

The creative impulses of man are always at war with the possessive impulses.

No man should ever publish a book until he has first read it to a woman.

Better the fragrant herb of wit and a little cream of affability than all the pretty cups in the world.

It is not that the French are not profound, but they all express themselves so well that we are led to take their geese for swans.

Nothing is sadder than the consequences of having worldly standards without worldly means.

Nothing is so soothing to our self-esteem as to find our bad traits in our forebears. It seems to absolve us.

The man who has the courage of his platitudes is always a successful man.

The instructed man is ashamed to pronounce in an Orphic manner what everybody knows, and because he is silent people think he is making fun of them.

Beauty identifies by face, but justifies by only heart.

I simply needed to excavate passion lost by being resilient, resolving the blockages, and healing. As soon as I did, the passion, and joy, burst forth.

I am as bad as the worst but thank God I am as good as the best.

I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

Because they're my stories, they're my version of events of the past three years. But I really hope people can hear their own stories within the songs and they can become our version of events.

In 2003, Congress authorized the construction of a visitor center for the Vietnam Memorial to help provide information and educate the public about the memorial and the Vietnam War.

A beautiful woman seductively dressed will never catch cold no matter how low-cut her gown.

The fun, joy, and humor dry up in a relationship when one of the partners is swimming in gin. To my way of thinking, it is selfishness personified to see life through the bottom of a liquor bottle.

I think if you have the compulsion to write, you're not going to feel whole until you start putting words on paper.

Men grow old quickly on the battlefield.