When mom and dad went to war the only prisoners they took were the children

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.

Keats was getting a reputation just when he was too ill to appreciate it or build on it: his country was taking notice of him just when he would have to leave it.

You have to be afraid of failure. You have to be terrified

Successful people do what others know they should do but will not. To become a success, or just be *more* successful, you will do what average, less-motivated people will not.

We need to wash the feet of our enemies.

You're always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that's maybe even too weird for your own taste.

I caught hold of the great bull market in soybeans in 1977. I had no idea what I was doing, incidentally.

I think that the world should be full of cats and full of rain, that's all, just cats and rain, rain and cats, very nice, good night.

We'll start signing Negroes when the Harlem Globetrotters start signing whites.

We're not perfect, we're not clean cut. We're just trying to be ourselves.

You might not agree with something, but it doesn't mean you don't need to listen to it. White people have to accept that they don't always know about racism.