Every life has a beginning. Mine started in an average-size town in East Texas in 1933. I was the middle child of five. My father was a barber. Mom was a housewife. What could have been more average? Life has its glaring moments, and my first one came about with my great-grandmother. I was very young at the time, and this part of my story is as encompassed by one phrase: "To understand wisdom, you need a wise grandmother."

Sarah Savannah was my great-grandmother. She always talked in aphorisms, such as, "Everyone and everything needs an anchor. Otherwise, you just drift." She gave me an anchor for my life when I was at a very young age. She said to me, "Boy, you have something the other kids don't have. For as long as you live, whatever you do, don't you dare disappoint Mr. God and me, and mess it up. Do you understand?" (It occurs to me now to wonder if I was ADD—today's explanation for deviate brain wiring.) I denounce that derogatory conclusion and prefer to believe that I was only TOTC (Totally Opposed to Compliance). Regardless, that encounter has motivated and modified my conduct even to this day. As you can imagine, Granny Savannah was a crusty old gal. She was barely five feet tall, not a huggy-kissy type of person, and she seldom smiled, and spoke sparingly. When she did speak, you listened. You can only fancy how many times I reflect on her Mr. God admonishment. She died shortly after that. She knew Mr. God! She possessed wisdom and freely proclaimed, "You can't get it anywhere else; it is a gift from Mr. God."

A lot of what you will be exposed to in this book is a recitation of some of her quotes, comments, and with your sanction, some offerings of what I think she would have said about our current world and society.

"We become whatever we regard in life, so don't confuse cotton for silk."

"Don't defend your bad conduct. Pride is the ultimate parasite."

"You are not using a time-saving tool when you put something off until tomorrow."

"On Judgment Day, the most some of us can look forward to, is a suspended sentence."

"At the end of the day, be done with it. Hopefully, you have done the best you can do. You may have messed it up, you may have stumbled, but it's not necessary to drag a cross through every tomorrow. Begin each day with serenity and high hopes with no worry or dread."

"Judgment is more about planting seeds than it is about harvesting because you're going to get back what you scatter."

"Mr. God won't help you make a bad decision, nor will he help when you won't make a decision."

"Fools never change their minds; wise folks sometimes do."

"I can put up with a fool making me laugh, better than with one who makes me wonder!"

"I have to be careful talking about folks who irritate me, because that's a cloak of ignorance. I go into that complaint closet of my mind, and I see hooks on the wall filled with shrouds of gripes and grudges. Pray that I can tear that closet out and turn it into an adulation arbor. I am not great, but I'd rather be."

"Choose your friends carefully; you are like whoever you stay around. My advice would be to spend time around folks who have more sense, compassion, and wealth than you do. If anything rubs off on you, these three things are not love, but they are not bad."

"Love that asks nothing in return is the most powerful. It creates and does not destroy."

"I practice behaving myself every day for the same reason that I brush my teeth, because I ought to."

"You know what's funny to me? Reality won't go away because you don't believe in it."

"Badly deformed and exceptionally brilliant people have much in common. There are only a few of each in the mix of people. They draw our attention because of that. We pay money to observe them, to learn, or to be entertained by them. We spend time making fun of them or imitating them. The deformed wake up slow and aggravate us. The brilliant wake-up fast and startle us into doing nothing. You will be better off spending time working on what Mr. God was thinking about when he made you."

"It's all right to be ugly, fat, or dumb, but would you mind just staying at home?"

"There is no way you can make a fool of yourself and not know it, if you're married!"

"A woman cannot make a fool out of a man without a lot of cooperation."

"When you're down and out, usually the first thing that shows up is your neighbor's nose."

"He who laughs last is usually the dumbest."

"Don't be greedy; we all only get one grave."

"You are your nearest of kin, and you are your own heir. You're going to create your own future and your own past. Think about it! I've seen people live a whole lifetime doing nothing, waiting on a rich relative to die, and then I attend the funeral of the one who was waiting. That is a sad but comical thing to watch. I'll say this also: people with money should be careful about saying, `I'm going to leave everything to you when I die.' Don't they realize what the heir is praying for every night?"

"Conscience is a strange fabric. Lose one stitch while working on it and a hole big enough to put your head through will appear."

"You've got to be one or the other, sad or joyful. You can't be just content; that's reserved for pigs in mud."

"I once knew an old woman who remembered things that never happened."

"You can't come back from some place you ain't never been."

"Shut your face. You're making my back end tired."

"Y'all come see me and bring what you like to eat."

"When we tell folks we have quit something harmful to us, it's usually after it goes out of fashion or we can no longer afford it. The truth is, it just quits us. The wisdom of this is things just change. Change seldom happens because of error. It more often happens out of boredom of the past. Wise folks are always looking for a better way to do something. That is the most pleasing cause of change."

"Wouldn't that blow your dress over your head?"

"If you think a seat belt is uncomfortable, try one of those morgue slabs."

"I think the world has about achieved perpetual commotion."

"If you are not going to sow, don't plow." (Don't gossip.)

"Say kind words about folks while they're alive. Taffy is better than epitaph-y."

"Even if you don't speak the English language, you can travel from coast-to-coast with just these few phrases: `How do you do?'; `I love you'; `Forgive me'; `Forget me'; and `Ham and eggs, please!'"

"Having a fortune and being fortunate are not always the same. Having what you define and need in a good family to be proud of and be a part of is my definition of being most fortunate. If that is all you possess in life, you're never going to be poor."

"When you take my picture, don't show me full-length—that's for cowboys so you can see their boots. I believe the other end of me is the valuable part."

"I sometimes find myself halfway between wit and...