“Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.”

Try to be better than yourself.

Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people. There is no such thing as was – only is.

Women know more about words than men ever will. And they know how little they can ever possibly mean.

I’d have wasted a lot of time and trouble before I learned that the best way to take all people, black or white, is to take them for what they think they are, then leave them alone.

The problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

No one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word. It is every individual’s individual code of behavior by means of which he makes himself a better human being than his nature wants to be, if he followed his nature only.

I don’t want money badly enough to work for it.

To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.

I believe man will not merely endure, he will prevail…because he has a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

Whatever its symbol – cross or crescent or whatever – that symbol is man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race.

Nothing can destroy the good writer. The only thing that can alter the good writer is death.

The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error.

The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to old friends.

No man can cause more grief than that one clinging blindly to the vices of his ancestors.

A man is the sum of his misfortunes.

The only time it dominates is during a solo, or when we play a low blues and I put figures in behind Eric’s vocals.

Blow the dust off the clock. Your watches are behind the times. Throw open the heavy curtains which are so dear to you – you do not even suspect that the day has already dawned outside.

The importance of local governance may not be obvious to an America accustomed to treating city and state downfalls with doses of federal comeuppance. Sometimes there’s a reason for that – the Civil War. More often, all reasoning seems absent – No Child Left Behind.

Behind the polished panelling the white ant eats away the wood. Nothing is ever quiet, except for fools

If you are not getting better, you are getting left behind.

What then are doing if not creating a better place together? I think, for me the key has to be, what do I want to create? What is it I want to leave behind?

In today’s digital online world, those who don’t share information will be isolated and left behind. We need the data of other countries to connect the dots.

In today’s digital online world, those who don’t share information will be isolated and left behind.