“This feat I also had no idea how to accomplish, but ignorance had never stopped me from taking action before.”

“Country music was the most segregated kind of music in America, where even whites played jazz and even blacks sang in the opera. Something like country music was what lynch mobs must have enjoyed w...”

“no one asks poor people if they want war.”

“...nothing is more precious than independence and freedom...”

“He responded with one of those looks of pity and amusement I was by now so used to getting, the kind that implied not only was my fly undone, but that there was nothing to see even if it was.”

“give a woman the chance to reject something else besides me”

“I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer. And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves ...”

“We have not been created out of nothing, but from primeval "ur-matter," atoms formed billions of years ago that have for a brief while been gathered into collections that think they are us.”

“Men are punished by their sins, not for them.”

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”