Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

Success isn't everything but it makes a man stand straight.

Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter 'repented', changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.

For every man who lives without freedom, the rest of us must face the guilt.

Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in 19th-century France and England, or 20th-century Russia and America.

Maybe money is unreal for most of us, easier to give away than things we want.

Haven't you lived in the South long enough to know that nothing is ever anybody's fault?