The writer's only responsibility is to his art...If a writer has to rob his mother, he will not hesitate; the 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies.

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.

To understand the world, you must first understand a place like Mississippi.

Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.

Don't do what you can do - try what you can't do.

There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn't fool with booze until he's fifty; then he's a damn fool if he doesn't.

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.

Being fearless doesn't mean living a life devoid of fear, but living a life in which our fears don't hold us back

Everyone who went to college and especially people working in media seem to know at least one person from Shaker Heights. There's just something about that place that made people go to the coast.

The tonal is so strong, that it even arranges a syntactical place for God and thus kills the mystery, the reality, and paralyzes the being.

Fate...may...be...thwarted.

Open all your pores and bathe in all the tides of nature, in all her streams and oceans, at all seasons.

There is no fate that plans men's lives. Whatever comes to us, good or bad, is usually the result of our own action or lack of action.

It’s your one last chance,” said Harry, “it’s all you’ve got left. . . .I’ve seen what you’ll be otherwise. . . . Be a man . . . try . . . Try for some remorse. . . .

My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it.

Love is rarely flawless,” Carter pointed out. “Humans delude themselves by thinking it has to be. It is the imperfection that makes love perfect.