"The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education."

"That a marriage ends is less than ideal but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds."

"Every marriage tends to consist of an aristocrat and a peasant. Of a teacher and a learner."

"Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea."

"The only people that you really have, that I learned, are your family, because they love you no matter what."

"I think if you look at the themes that are presented in the film, some are inherently social, and I think that any film which deals with the family is dealing with the smallest social unit in our society - and in a sense it is a question of scope."

"I want to apologize to all of the people I have let down because of my behavior which has reflected badly on my family, friends, co-workers, business associates and others."

"As a kid, I was growing up in an era of celebration of the Civil War centennial, with a lot of 'Lost Cause' emphasis on the Confederacy. I used to play Civil War soldiers with my brothers as a child, and my older brother always insisted that he got to be Lee, and I got be Grant. I never knew that Grant won until quite some time had passed."