The [priest] was really my teacher, because I reacted against the things he told me.

I have always taken care to put an idea or emotion behind my words. I have made it a habit to be suspicious of the mere music of words.

Art is animated by invisible forces that rule the universe.

What if this were Hell, this absence of sleep, this poet's desert, this pain of living, this dying of not dying, this anguish of shadows, this passion over death and light.

Let us listen to the voices of our Forebears ... In the smoky cabin, souls that wish us well are murmuring.

Exile might satisfy the anger of the living, but it did not appease the dead.

I think Father Christmas is real because the belief is real. The belief becomes the reality.

Whatever is received is received according to the nature of the recipient.

Why did I write? whose sin to me unknown Dipt me in ink, my parents', or my own? As yet a child, nor yet a fool to fame, I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.

It's the greatest compliment when the writer becomes invisible in the whole process.

If you talk to the Whites in Mississippi they will tell you, 'You can go to any school you want to; we don't see race.' Biggest lie ever told.

When you have an opportunity to take the lead and you don't, most of the time something bad happens.

Let us not forget that we can never go farther than we can persuade at least half of the people to go.

You can only make decisions with the information you have at the time

Power for men means the ability to make things happen ... The female definition of power is the ability not to have to please.