We old athletes carry the disfigurements and markings of contests remembered only by us and no one else. Nothing is more lost than a forgotten game.

Without music, life is a journey through a desert.

It's impossible to explain to a Yankee what 'tacky' is. They simply have no word for it up north, but my God, do they ever need one.

I was born and raised on a Carolina sea island and I carried the sunshine of the low-country, inked in dark gold, on my back and shoulders.

I’ve never had anyone’s approval, so I’ve learned to live without it.

The most powerful words in English are, 'Tell me a story.'

Here is all I ask of a book- give me everything. Everything, and don't leave out a single word.

I stood face to face with the moon and the ocean and the future that spread out with all its bewildering immensity before me.

Good writing ... involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear.

There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.

The great teachers fill you up with hope and shower you with a thousand reasons to embrace all aspects of life.

I am certain that a Sewing Machine would relieve as much human suffering as a hundred Lunatic Asylums, and possibly a good deal more.

If the imagination is to transcend and transform experience it has to question, to challenge, to conceive of alternatives, perhaps to the very life you are living at the moment.

We shouldn’t have a bunch of politicians, a majority of whom are men, making health care decisions on behalf of women.

If you don't change your schedule, you'll be the same person you've always been.

When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable If I have not an excellent library.

The Creator, if He exists, has a special preference for beetles.

I started singing at age five and haven't stopped since.

I don't know what type of music my son will want. By the time he starts listening to music, really, at like 15, 16, I'll probably have 10 albums out by that time.

My nan used to look after me in the summer holidays and she had a cat with one eye. It used to walk into walls and tables. I used to think it was hilarious. It was a slapstick cat.

I have always known that I wanted to work with youth through the arts and I believe the arts can help young people cope with hardship.