Each of us, famous or infamous, is a role model for somebody, and if we aren't, we should behave as though we are -- cheerful, kind, loving, courteous. Because you can be sure someone is watching and taking deliberate and diligent notes.

I would be a liar, a hypocrite, or a fool - and I'm not any of those - to say that I don't write for the reader. I do. But for the reader who hears, who really will work at it, going behind what I seem to say. So I write for myself and that reader who will pay the dues.

At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.

Tragedy, no matter how sad, becomes boring to those not caught in its addictive caress.

It is important that we learn humility, which says there was someone else before me who paid for me. My responsibility is to prepare myself so that I can pay for someone else who is yet to come.

We all have that possibility, that potential and that promise of seeing beyond the seeming.

Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.