Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.

The truth brings the past into the present and prepares us for the future. That's what truth does

People are too busy putting things under microscopes and so forth. Creativity is greater than the sum of its parts.

The honorary duty of a human being is to love.

You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

The autobiographer looks at life through the lens of his or her own life and really uses herself or himself as the jumping-off place to examine the social mores and the economic and political climates. In a way, the autobiography becomes history as well as the story of one person, for it becomes the story of a family or the story of the state or nation.