The old aphorisms are basically sound. First impressions are lasting.

Sometimes I think no matter how one is born, no matter how one acts, there is something out of gear with one somewhere, and that must be changed. Life at its best is a grand corrective.

To be a colored man in America ... and enjoy it, you must be greatly daring, greatly stolid, greatly humorous and greatly sensitive. And at all times a philosopher.

The Complex of color...every colored man feels it sooner or later. It gets in the way of his dreams, of his education, of his marriage, of the rearing of his children.

Aviation is poetry ... It's the finest kind of moving around, you know, just as poetry is the finest way of using words.

Biology transcends society.

Unhealthy relationships keep our self-esteem low.

The greatest figures in history are never the ones who avoid failure, but those who march chin-up through countless failures, one after the next, until they come upon the occasional victory.

Have death always before your eyes as a salutary means of returning to God.

I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.

The Second Amendment to our Constitution is clear. The right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed upon. Period.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion. The former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Dogs are very different from cats in that they can be images of human virtue. They are like us.

Chiropractic care is the only real, long-lasting relief that I have found for my neck pain due to an old injury.

It is my melancholy fate to like so many people I profoundly disagree with and often heartily dislike people who agree with me.

Being a writer is an endless study in human transition and lessons learned or forgotten or misapplied.