“Teach us all to do right, Lord, please, and to get along together with that atom bomb on this earth because I do not want it to fall on me-nor Thee-nor anybody living. Amen!”

I did not believe political directives could be successfully applied to creative writing . . . not to poetry or fiction, which to be valid had to express as truthfully as possible the individual emotions and reactions of the writer.

I do not want no pretty woman. First thing you know, you fall in love with her-then you got to kill somebody about her. She’ll make you so jealous, you’ll bust!

A world I dream where black or white, Whatever race you be, Will share the bounties of the Earth And every man is free.

Good morning, Revolution: You’re the very best friend I ever had. We gonna pal around together from now on.

Never look for a worm in the apple of your eye.

A picture, to be an interesting picture, must be more than a picture, otherwise it is only a reproduction of an object, and not an object of value in itself.

I tire so of hearing people say, Let things take their course. Tomorrow is another day. I do not need my freedom when I’m dead. I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

Humor is laughing at what you haven’t got when you ought to have it.

I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.

Cheap little rhymes A cheap little tune Are sometimes as dangerous As a sliver of the moon.

There’s a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred.

The calm, Cool face of the river, Asked me for a kiss.

I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. I don’t dare start thinking in the morning. If I thought thoughts in bed, Them thoughts would bust my head– So I don’t dare start thinking in the morning.

If you want to honor me, give some young boy or girl who’s coming along trying to create arts and write and compose and sing and act and paint and dance and make something out of the beauties of the Negro race-give that child some help.

This morning I paid seventy cents for two little old dried-up slivers of bacon and one cockeyed egg. It took me till noon to get my appetite back.

The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night And I love the rain.

For a loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth.

Where it gets weird is that nowadays there are millions of people on this earth who call themselves followers of Jesus, but their lives look nothing like His, and they’re not obeying the things that He called them to do.

This earthly life is a battle,’ said Ma. ‘If it isn’t one thing to contend with, it’s another. It always has been so, and it always will be. The sooner you make up your mind to that, the better off you are, and more thankful for your pleasures.

The moment we take our last breath on earth, we take our first in heaven.

The universe is almost 14 billion years old, and, wow! Life had no problem starting here on Earth! I think it would be inexcusably egocentric of us to suggest that we’re alone in the universe.

Human beings are the only creatures on earth that claim a God and the only thing that behaves like it hasn’t got one.

In the twilight of life, God will not judge us on our earthly possessions and human success, but rather on how much we have loved.

In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.