Let the water flow beneath the bridge; let men be men, that is to say, weak, vain, inconstant, unjust, false, and presumptuous; let the world be the world still; you cannot prevent it. Let every one follow his own inclination and habits; you cannot r...
Musicians do not have to be believed in. We do not have to be trusted. Our Music speaks for itself without the listener having to know anything about us. Music touches people's emotions in a way that nothing else can. When people find a musician they...
There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love, and like that colossal adventure it is an experience of great social import. Even as the tranced swain, the booklover yearns to tell others of his bliss. He writes lette...
I grew excited when I realized this basic asymmetry implied that nothing – no evidence, no information, no facts or data – connected me to the stranger except for the evidence of my own personal observations which remained private as long as I ke...
Po: But dad, didn't you ever, I don't know, want to do something else? Something besides noodles? Mr. Ping: Actually, when I was young and crazy, I thought about running away and learning how to make tofu. Po: So why didn't you? Mr. Ping: Oh, because...
Niki Lauda: Your fan belt is loose. Marlene Lauda: My what? Niki Lauda: And when you brake your foot goes all the way down, which means there's air in the system. Marlene Lauda: Anything else? Niki Lauda: No... Apart from the rear brakes are worn out...
Marianne: And as for you, you have no right, no right at all, to parade your ignorant assumptions... Margaret: They're not assumptions, you told me. Marianne: I told you nothing. Margaret: They'll meet him when he comes, anyway. Marianne: Margaret, t...
I usually write when I'm in a great place. When I'm depressed, I don't usually write. So I take all of when I'm depressed and throw it into when I'm feeling good. Weird, I guess.
My mother, who would always buy her books new, hated it the vintage hardcovers with their cracked spines and threadbare cloth covers. True you couldn't go in there and buy the latest best seller, but when you held one of those volumes in your hands, ...
I’ve been kissed by men who did a very good job. But they don’t give kissing their whole attention. They can’t. No matter how hard they try parts of their minds are on something else. Missing the last bus—or their chances of making the gal—...
I am not a Sunday morning inside four walls with clean blood and organized drawers. I am the hurricane setting fire to the forests at night when no one else is alive or awake however you choose to see it and I live in my own flames sometimes burning ...
[T]he enduring problem for liberals, as for everyone else, is not whether history will judge them wise or foolish regarding the war on terrorism; it is, rather, the way that the past decade has splintered them away from other Americans. This fracture...
[first lines] Aibileen Clark: I was born 1911, Chicksaw County, Piedmont Plantation. Woman: And did you know as a girl growing up that one day you'd be a maid? Aibileen Clark: Yes ma'am, I did. Woman: And you knew that because... Aibileen Clark: My m...
We all make mistakes, we all have fears, and we all have weaknesses. Behind all that is our essential self. When our essential self has made contact with another, the light is dazzling and would fill the universe. The challenge of enchantment is to r...
When the mind becomes so completely absorbed in perfect health that all sickness is forgotten, all the powers of mind will proceed to create health, and every trace of sickness will soon disappear. When the mind becomes so completely absorbed in high...
My past is everything I failed to be.
Without hope we fail to exist.
Age is just a number, and your talent will never fail you. It has no expiry date.
The one way of guaranteeing to fail is to assume that we will.
I work as hard as possible and try to fail gracefully. :-)
You fail only if you stop writing.