“And I know there are plenty of other "colored" things I could do besides telling my stories or going to Shirley Boon's meetings- the mass meetings in town, the marches in Birmingham, the voting rallies upstate. But truth is, I don't care that much about voting. I don't care about eating at a counter with white people. What I care about is, if in ten years, a white lady will call my girls dirty and accuse them of stealing the silver.”

“you can tell a true war story if it embarrasses you. If you don't care for obscenity, you don't care for the truth; if you don't care for the truth, watch how you vote. Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty. ”

“Okay, maybe I don't go around loving everybody I meet, maybe my smiles are hard to come by, but I do care for some people.”

“Every town you go to, they tell you what's special about their town. What they're number one at... This guy comes up and says, 'D'you know that we're the home of the world's largest frying pan?''...Really! That is great 'cause I'm writin' a new book called Things I Don't Care About.”

“I don't care if people hate my guts; I assume most of them do. The important question is whether they are in a position to do anything about it.”

“I don't want to care. If I care about things, it'll just be worse, it'll just be another thing to worry about. It's less painful if I don't care.”