Religious speech is extreme emotional and motivational. It is anti-literal relying on metaphor allusion and other rhetorical devices and it assumes knowledge within a community of believers.

I think a lot of people even Christians are willing to be satisfied with gaining lots and lots of biblical knowledge - and many people go to Bible studies and don't realize it isn't enough to know what's right it's applying the information and the knowledge that you have.

Novelists are not equipped to make a movie in my opinion. They make their own movie when they write: they're casting they're dressing the scene they're working out where the energy of the scene is coming from and they're also relying tremendously on the creative imagination of the reader.

Talent lying in the understanding is often inherited genius being the action of reason or imagination rarely or never.

Flying back from New York the flight attendant said 'God I wished you were here yesterday we had a stroke on the plane. I said if I have a stroke on a plane I hope the pretend doctor isn't the one on the plane. I want a real doctor.

When he is late for dinner and I know he must be either having an affair or lying dead in the street I always hope he's dead.

Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope by a limit imposed from without but falsely identified as lying within.

When my son was born and after a day of lying-in I was told that I could leave the hospital and take him home I burst into tears. It wasn't the emotion of the moment: it was shock and horror.

Let me tell you never before in the history of this planet has anybody made the progress that African-Americans have made in a 30-year period in spite of many black folks and white folks lying to one another.

Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.