People couldn't understand why my mama would have this blind kid out doing things like cutting wood for the fire. But her thing was: He may be blind, but he ain't stupid.

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.

Age appears to be best in four things; old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

I'm a big Sunday guy. I'll do some wood work in the morning, making tables, cutting boards, desks, whatever with my buddy Adam. I usually start cooking dinner early.

With Ed Wood, it was this sort of blending of Ronald Reagan, the Tin Man from 'The Wizard of Oz,' and Casey Kasem.

Bad company is like a nail driven into a post, which, after the first and second blow, may be drawn out with little difficulty; but being once driven up to the head, the pincers cannot take hold to draw it out, but which can only be done by the destruction of the wood.

'The Lion' all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, 'Let's try to make a story about it.'

I'm part wood nymph. I require mountains and warm, dense patches of moss to thrive.

The rat stops gnawing in the wood, the dungeon walls withdraw, the weight is lifted your pulse steadies and the sun has found your heart, the day was not bad, the season has not been bad, there is sense and even promise in going on.

After all those days in the cotton fields, the dreams came true on a gold record on a piece of wood. It's in my den where I can look at it every day. I wear it out lookin' at it.

I always said that if I could just find a guy who could chop wood and had a nice smile, it wouldn't bother me if he was a thug or an aristocrat, as long as he was a good guy. And I've ended up with an educated thug.

Once upon a time there was a piece of wood. It was not an expensive piece of wood. Far from it. Just a common block of firewood, one of those thick, solid logs that are put on the fire in winter to make cold rooms cozy and warm.

We had grain but no mills, so I designed a special mill of wood so we could make flour.

I've always remembered something Sanford Meisner, my acting teacher, told us. When you create a character, it's like making a chair, except instead of making someting out of wood, you make it out of yourself. That's the actor's craft - using yourself to create a character.

By means of tracing-paper I transfer my design to the wood and draw on that.

The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it, because it's only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles, wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.

The word 'iconic' is used too frequently - an icon is a statue carved in wood. It was shocking at first, when I got that reference. It was a responsibility, and it's impossible to live up to - you're supposed to be dead, for one thing.

The workshop to me always means great atmosphere, working, smell of wood, dust and, at the end of the day, you've created something.

The greatest thing my father left me was a love for cutting wood - my love for sawing, especially pine wood.