My dad loved black singers. So listening to New Orleans music, eventually I wanted to play an instrument.

Come, come, said Tom's father, at your time of life, There's no longer excuse for thus playing the rake-- It is time you should think, boy, of taking a wife. Why, so it is father--whose wife shall I take?

Thomas Moore

My books are elegiac in the sense that they're odes to a nation that even I sometimes think may not exist anymore except in my memory and my imagination.

Richard Russo

You must give to get, You must sow the seed, before you can reap the harvest.

Scott Reed

It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.

W. H. Auden

Adult helplessness destroys children. Or it forces them to become tiny adults of their own.

Neil Gaiman

I'm too old to know everything

Oscar Wilde

War does not determine who is right - only who is left

Bertrand Russell

Unless a man undertakes more than he possibly can do, he will never do all he can do.

Henry Drummond

When you enter the House of God, you leave your ego at the door and embrace purity as if your life depended on it.

Sufian Chaudhary

Custom has made dancing sometimes necessary for a young man; therefore mind it while you learn it, that you may learn to do it well, and not be ridiculous, though in a ridiculous act.

Lord Chesterfield

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.

Blaise Pascal

I had in my soul the greatest truths to tell, but when I came to the work of telling them I couldn't do it.

William Saroyan