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How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times.
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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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If I'm the people's poet, then I ought to be in people's hands - and, I hope, in their heart.
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I went to sleep last night and I arose with the dawn, I know that there are others who're still sleeping on, They've gone away, You've let me stay, I want to thank You.
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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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I'm very, very serious - I'm serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely wedded to the next moment.
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Every December, I host a tree-trimming party. I serve chili with cornbread and lots of good wine. It's a wonderful party, and it shows how much adults like to play.
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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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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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I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.
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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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I like to have guns around. I don't like to carry them.
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'Glory Falls'
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I've never had a dislike for men. I've been badly treated by some. But I've been loved greatly by some. I married a lot of them.
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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'm not a writer who teaches. I'm a teacher who writes.