It is music that speaks to the deepest reaches of your soul, and you are lifted higher, ever higher, by the adagio, in my opinion more so even than in any of the masses that Beethoven composed.

I've had good publishers and bad publishers, and you've got to learn when the advice is sensible and when it's not.

Southerners have many fine qualities, charm and civility among them, and a sense of the tragic.

Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.

It may sound strange, but when you're a kid and you're in that environment, for some reason for a long time you think, when the doors are closed in other houses, this is what it's like everywhere. And then at some point you begin to realize that isn't true, and books were really the educational system that showed me that there were many better and different ways to live a life.

Appearances are not reality; but they often can be a convincing alternative to it. You can control appearances most of the time, but facts are what they are. When the facts are too sharp, you can craft a cheerful version of the situation and cover the facts the way that you can covered a battered old four-slice toaster with a knitted cozy featuring images of kittens.

The mockery of friends is affectionate, and inoculates against foolishness.