Why has the South produced so many good writers? Because we got beat.

Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.

You live in a deranged age, more deranged than usual because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.

Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.

To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something.

In this world goodness is destined to be defeated. But a man must go down fighting. That is the victory. To do anything less is to be less than a man.

We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their face away.

I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?

In a word, the consumer of mass culture is lonely, not only lonely, but spiritually impoverished.

Fiction doesn’t tell us something we don’t know, it tells us something we know but don’t know that we know.

Lucky is the man who does not secretly believe that every possibility is open to him.

When you are bored of the plains, the secret passages to the mountains suddenly appear out of nowhere before you!

Good food is a celebration of life, and it seems absurd to me that in celebrating life we should take life. That is why I don't eat flesh. I see no need for killing.

The shooting of the guns, that was kind of funny, because rolling a cigarette and shooting a gun aren't like normal things for a 13-year old girl!

As an actor, you're always playing different people, so you yourself are always kind of going through an identity crisis.

In order to thoroughly enjoy anything, one must feel the absence of it at times.

No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others.

We used to think, 'I have a feeling; I want to make a call.' Now our impulse is, 'I want to have a feeling; I need to send a text.'

Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.

Most famous people get younger and younger. I sometimes ask myself that question: 'How come I'm the only person who's getting older?'

Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear.