“I think that each of us is so much alike, and yet at the same time we are so different, and I have a feeling that if you encountered difficulty, and I with my age encountered the same difficulty, I would respond one way, and you would respond another. Neither would be right or wrong. It's just that each of us is courageous, and that's what I encourage, courage, and the courage to see, and the courage to say to oneself what one has seen. Don't be in denial.”

“Pretty women wonder where my secret lies. I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size But when I start to tell them, They think I'm telling lies. I say, It's in the reach of my arms The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I'm a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me.”

“In today's climate in our country, which is sickened with the pollution of pollution, threatened with the prominence of AIDS, riddled with burgeoning racism, rife with growing huddles of the homeless, we need art and we need art in all forms. We need all methods of art to be present, everywhere present, and all the time present.”

“Each child belongs to all of us and they will bring us a tomorrow in direct relation to the responsibility we have shown to them.”

“Anyone of us can be a rainbow in somebody's clouds. I want the University of Cincinnati to be a rainbow in the clouds. The University of Cincinnati is really a possibility of hope; it is a rainbow.”

“Write till your ink be dry, and with your tearsMoist it again, and frame some feeling lineThat may discover such integrity.”

“It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.”

“My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects.”

“Nor age so eat up my invention.”

“Ideas are the very coinage of your brain.”

“Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long / To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?”

“For in my youth I never did apply Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood.”

“I hourly learn a doctrine of obedience.”

“Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lender's books, and defy the foul fiend.”

“Much rain wears the marble.”

“Though patience be a tired mare, yet she will plod.”

“O gentle son, Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper, sprinkle cool patience.”

“Things won are done, joy's soul lies in the doing.”

“Science finds it methods.”

“Not in his goals but in his transitions, man is great.”

“The great will not condescend to take anything seriously.”

“Why has my motley diary no jokes? Because it is a soliloquy and every man is grave alone.”

“It is my belief, you cannot deal with the most serious things in the world unless you understand the most amusing.”