And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it’s there for a reason, and that’s to make the world a better place.
Humility is not a virtue in a writer, it is an absolute necessity.
Some people say you pick up the Dirty Boogie where you left it off. Others say you pick it up where you would have been had you never gotten off it.
I looked at Lucas with the pang that a parent feels when he knows his child will be hurt and that it’s no one’s fault and that to try to preempt the rites of passage is an act of contempt for the child’s courage.
As I was to learn, patience and latitude and even humility are, paradoxically, the handmaidens of wealth, because virtue is costly only for those who own nothing else.
If there is any human tragedy, there is only one, and it occurs when we forget who we are and remain silent while a stranger takes up residence inside our skin.
…and I wonder if there is any way to adequately describe the folly that causes us to undo all the great gifts of both Earth and Heaven.
My experience with age it instills a degree of patience in some, leaves the virtuous spiritually unchanged, feeds the character defects in others, and brings little wisdom to any of us.
I would start with four fingers of Jack in a thick mug, with a sweating Budweiser back, and by midnight I would be alone at the end of the bar, armed, drunk, and hunched over my glass, morally and psychologically insane.
And like most middle-aged people who hear the clock ticking in their lives, I had come to resent a waste or theft of my time that was greater than any theft of my goods or money.
I’m over the hill for come-on lines. On a quiet day, I can hear my liver rotting. For exercise, I fall down. ~ Clete
I had to feel sorry for Bubba’s wife. In AA we called it denial. We take the asp to our breast and smile at the alarm we see in the eyes of others.
The only thing an artist has to remember is to never lose faith in his vision.