The sharp thorn often produces delicate roses.

My hopes are not always realized, but I always hope.

A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.

Quarrels are the dowry which married folk bring one another.

Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you.

Make the workmanship surpass the materials.

Love is no assignment for cowards.

Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind, and has given up worrying once and for all.

The man who has experienced shipwreck shudders even at a calm sea.

Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.

If you want to be loved, be lovable.

The service of self terminates at our own death.

Love connects a man to his woman, money a woman to his man

Someone told me once that Lucinda Williams takes six years between albums, and that's what stuck to me; it's like, you really are a factory. You don't do things to make them, on your own time.

It's a closing of the mind that happens when you want to be lazy and go with the easiest answers, like the media do all the time in their sound bytes.

Common sense is seeing things as they are; and doing things as they ought to be.

If access to health care is considered a human right, who is considered human enough to have that right?

There are certain things we must not pray about - moods, for instance. Moods never go by praying, moods go by kicking.

The brain can be seen as a complex machine, like a gooey computer.

Honey, don't walk out, I'm too drunk to follow.

The people who can be helping to make movies that have blacks and Latinos and women and all that - that movie doesn't come to you. Because the idea is that there's no place for black movies.