It was the poem that explained the nature of courage and turned the mystery of death into a heroic couplet. Ultimately, it was the poem that banished fear from the heart and transformed us from actors into participants.
Colored or not, we all pick the white man’s cotton.
If there is any human tragedy, there is only one, and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence inside our skin.
The real gladiators of the world are so humble in their origins and unremarkable in appearance that when we stand next to them in a grocery-store line, we never guess how brightly their souls can burn in the dark.
The system shaves the dice on the side of those with money and power, and anyone who believes otherwise deserves anything that happens to him.
Age is a peculiar kind of thief. It slips up on you and steps inside your skin and is so quiet and methodical in its work that you never realize it has stolen your youth until you look into the mirror one morning and see a man you don’t recognize.
When you find the right people, you never let go. The people who count are the ones who are your friends in lean times. You have all the friends you want when things are going well.
How do you explain to yourself the casual manner in which you threw your life away?
There’s nothing like rejection to make you do an inventory of yourself.
You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.
I wouldn’t write anything autobiographical. If you’ve lived a life like Laurence of Arabia, it might be a consideration, but otherwise it’s a little bit vain, it seems to me.
It has been my experience that most human stories are circular rather than linear. Regardless of the path we choose, we somehow end up where we commenced – in part, I suspect, because the child who lives in us goes along for the ride.
God bless the Reference Librarians.
Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity.
We gain no wisdom by imposing our way on others.
There’s no substitute for loyalty.
If we break promises to God, shouldn’t we be allowed an occasional violation of our word to our friends and superiors?
Never read bad stuff if you’re an artist; it will impair your own game. I don’t know if you ever played competitive tennis, but you learn not to watch bad tennis; it messes up your game. Art’s the same way.
If you put somebody on a crack pipe and give them a 9 mm Baretta, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what’s going to happen next.
I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it’s no one’s fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the child’s courage.