“Ya just ain’t listen’n boy. It ain’t that you cain’t, more that you won’t. Somethin’ you don’t wanna hearn keeps pecking at your ear drum, and you reckon by shooing it away that whatever that little fellar has to say ain’t something you have to pay any mind to. Well, boy, it simply ain’t like that. I have done spent the entiritee of my life watching people shoo that little bird away, only to see um later on down the road have to pay heed to that winged bugler. Course, by then, it is often too little, too late. Good advice only helps a fellar afore it is needed. Once a-body takes a notion in his mind to do a thing, why then he don’t need no further advice. Some folks, though, they never hear nothin’ else other than what it is they wanted to hear in the first place. Course, then they wanna pester everybody else about how their life ain’t what they had hoped for.”

“I ain’t then gonna tell you how to go about livin’ your life, since you all ready knows best how it is you think it oughta be best accomplished, but I aim to point out the central point I’m noticin'--a man that ain’t listenin’ can’t hear no train if one happens to be a-comin. Sometimes, it turns out, that a man finds himself on them tracks, and he cain’t hear no train but only because he couldn’t hear nothin’ else no ways before. By the time that body notices that train, why, it is far too late.”

“I adjure you then, boy, to put your mind to learnin’ to listen before you take another step. Only ways of doing that is to learn to tell yourself to shut the hell up and listin’ for tha voice of the Lord. Stop thinkin’ you know anythin’ and start a-askin.”