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For a person who grew up in the '30s and '40s in the segregated South, with so many doors closed without explanation to me, libraries and books said, 'Here I am, read me.' Over time I have learned I am at my best around books.
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Elimination of illiteracy is as serious an issue to our history as the abolition of slavery.
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I am capable of what every other human is capable of. This is one of the great lessons of war and life.
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Easy reading is damn hard writing. But if it's right, it's easy. It's the other way round, too. If it's slovenly written, then it's hard to read. It doesn't give the reader what the careful writer can give the reader.
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All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.
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I like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them.
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I'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes.
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One of my lungs is half gone, and the other half, because I smoked for years, has a lesion. So I can't swim anymore and had the swimming pool covered over. Now it's what I call the dance pavilion, and so I and my friends sit out and put music on and watch people dance.
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We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life.
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In all the world there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world there is no love for you like mine.
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Most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.
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Visit us again, Savior.Your children, burdened with disbelief, blinded by a patina of wisdom, carom down this vale of fear. We cry for you although we have lost your name.
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I created myself. I have taught myself so much.
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I write some country music. There's a song called 'I Hope You Dance.' Incredible. I was going to write that poem; somebody beat me to it.