“You have to be prepared and be available. That is truly the challenge. That is why we study and that is what we work for. That is what you get paid the big bucks for; to have your eyes saying one thing and your mouth saying another. The audience picks up on it.”

“You don't always talk with your mouth. Sometimes what you say with your mouth hardly matters at all. You have to signify”

“You face the biggest challenge of all: to have the courage to seek your big dream regardless of what anyone says. You are the only person alive who can see your big picture and even you can't see it all.”

“You didn't need a college degree to become one of the people who knew what was really going on. If you paid attention, you could pick things up on your own.”

“Poetry begins in trivial metaphors, pretty metaphors, "grace" metaphors, and goes on to the profoundest thinking that we have. Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another. People say, "Why don’t you say what you mean?"”

“The essence of what you have to say you pick up before you're twenty.”

“It took me over three years to get the beret and the most enriching part of the experience was getting to know men for whom you would have given your life on the battlefield. It is a big thing to say there are people who are not your family for whom you would give up your life. But that is how close we became.”

“that expression you get in your eyes when you are very tired and everything is like a dream and you are starting to know what things are like underneath what people say they are.”

“They're taking shortcuts to get a big laugh instead of working for their audience. They can finish a show, hang up their tux and shirt, and put it up for next time. With mine, you have to wring out the sweat and send it to the cleaners. You gotta go out and work for your audience.”

“It's not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life, it's what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!”