“The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box.”

I’m still old-fashioned. I love dusty old books and libraries.

As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don’t think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, ‘I’m probably no better than you, but I’m certainly your equal.

When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles ’em.

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Things are never as bad as they seem.

We’re paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.

Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they’re not attracting attention with it.

I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.

I do much of my creative thinking while golfing. If people know you’re working at home they think nothing of walking in for a cup of coffee, but wouldn’t dream of interrupting on the golf course.

Are you proud of yourself tonight that you have insulted a total stranger whose circumstances you know nothing about?

Everybody’s gotta learn, nobody’s born knowing.

Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screeneed porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape.

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

Sometimes the Bible in the hands of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.

I dyed my hair for photo tests… I kept it because when am I ever going to be blond again?

I think drugs affect poor people and people of color more than anyone.

I told the stars about you. I have reached the moon for you. Those two eyes of yours can swallow the deepest oceans. I asked the white clouds to fill us with colors. But soon I realized it was all you. Stars, moon, clouds, raindrops, universe. It was all in you.

Maybe I’ll make a huge color tapestry from my belly button lint.

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress, running like a water color in the rain.

There are as many forms of advice as there are colors of the rainbow. Remember that good advice can come from bad people and bad advice from good people.

You know, it’s no accident that the great painters came from areas like Europe where there is a lot of clouds and rain, which begets color and subtle washes of tone.

Today, at Harvard, any student with the currently fashionable color of skin is given rights denied to students of the currently unfashionable color.