“Don’t bother just to be better than others. Try to be better than yourself.”

The quotidian demands of life distract from this resonance of images and events, but some of us feel it always.

I know now that what makes a fool is an inability to take even his own good advice.

If there is a God what the hell is He for?

Some things you must always be unable to bear. Some things you must never stop refusing to bear. Injustice and outrage and dishonor and shame.

He must train himself in ruthless intolerance-that is to throw away anything that is false no matter how much he might love that page or that paragraph.

Don’t be ‘a writer’. Be writing.

And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.

She was the captain of her soul

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.

The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863…

Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday’s omissions and regrets.

I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire…

We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.

The poets are almost always wrong about the facts… That’s because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth…

Try to be better than yourself.

If it’s controversy out there, or if it’s some false stories out there, I want to clear it up. That’s just what I’m all about.

If I can make my mark just a little bit, then great.

When you flop, that’s just another message that you don’t know how to play me. Stand up and take your medicine like a man.

I just want everyone to know I’m suing Ruben Studdard. He had his hand on my ass and he wouldn’t let go.

My goal was just to try and be the best player on my high school team, and look where I am now. And that was still my goal as a young kid, just to try and be a little better than my brother was.

Just fully being skillful involves total lack of inhibition. We are not afraid to be. We are not afraid to live. We must accept ourselves as being warriors. If we acknowledge ourselves as warriors, then there is a way in, because a warrior dares to be, like a tiger in the jungle.

And then, just as Wilbur was settling down for his morning nap, he heard again the thin voice that had addressed him the night before. “Salutations!” said the voice. Wilbur jumped to his feet. “Salu-what?” he cried. “Salutations!” repeated the voice.

I have never gone to a doctor in my adult life, feeling instinctively that doctors meant either cutting or, just as bad, diet.