Truisms are true--hold on to that!
~George Orwell, 1984
Tomorrow night is nothing but one long sleepless wrestle with yesterday's omissions and regrets. ~William Faulkner
The scattered tea goes with the leaves and every day a sunset dies. ~William Faulkner
A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. ~John Steinbeck
There is a wisdom of the head, and...a wisdom of the heart. ~Charles Dickens
I don't like to embarrass anyone by having them be seen talking to me. ~Paula Danzinger, The Cat Ate My Gymsuit
She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next. ~Beverley Cleary, Ramona the Pest
Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea. ~Beverly Cleary, Ramona Quimby, Age 8
How could she stay out of mix-ups when she never knew what would suddenly turn into a mix-up? ~Beverly Cleary, Ramona the Brave
All I ask of in the world is just one day after another with nothing planned. ~Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy
If you ever get in real trouble, don't panic. Sit down and think about it. Remember two things, always. There must be some way out of it and there must be humor in it somewhere. ~Louise Fitzhugh, Harriet the Spy
Never bet on an eggplant. ~Daniel Pinkwater, Borgel
The world was so freaky, he felt. Really very freaky indeed and no one was doing much about it. ~Paul Zindel, The Undertaker's Gone Banannas
I was within and without simultaneously, enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustable variety of life. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
It appeared to me that a lot of getting by in hard times had to do with tongue-holding. It didn't come all that natural to me. ~Patricia Beatty, Turn Homeward, Hannalee
The first thing you learn in life is you're a fool. The last thing you learn in life is you're the same fool. ~Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine
Time is so strange and life is twice as strange. ~Ray Bradbury Dandelion Wine
A good night's sleep, or a ten-minute brawl, or a pint of chocolate ice cream, or all three together, is good medicine. ~Ray Bradbury Dandelion Wine
I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. ~Anne Frank
Everybody likes a few surprises; it's a perfectly natural human craving. ~Jean Webster, Daddy Long-Legs
You're a bore, I said to me. You're puny. You're lacking in quality, like a pair of factory-rejected Fruit of the Loom shorts. And this was without considering any sexual problems, since I've never had sex with anyone except myself. ~Paul Zindel, The Amazing and Death-Defying Diary of Eugene Dingman
I didn't believe in systems. Everything human was imperfect and ultimately absurd. What did I believe in then? In humor. In laughing at systems, at people, at one's self. In laughing even at one's need to laugh all the time. In seeing life as contradictory, many-sided, various, funny, tragic, and with moments of outrageous beauty. In seeing life as a fruitcake, including delicious plums and bad peanuts, but meant to be devoured hungrily all the same because you couldn't feast on the plums without also sometimes being poisoned by the peanuts. ~Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
"Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!" ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
You know, it's a funny thing, you can smoke yourself to death, drink yourself to death, work yourself to death, and even eat yourself to death. But that's all acceptable. The only thing you can't do medically is screw yourself to death and yet that's where they put all the obstacles. ~Mario Puozo, The Godfather
Truth is a hard deer to hunt. If you eat too much truth at once, you might die of the truth. ~Stephen Vincent Benet, "By the Waters of Babylon"
Wisdom is a dreadful thing when it brings no knowledge to its possessor. ~Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
Life is made of ever so many pairings welded together. ~Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Just because something feels better than anything else, that doesn't mean it's good for you. ~Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
All men are so detestable in my eyes,/I should be sorry if they thought me wise. ~Moliere, "The Misanthrope"
The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population-the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it's the fools, no matter where you go in the world, it's the fools that form the overwhelming majority. But I'll be damned if that means it's right the fools should dominate the intelligent. ~Henrik Ibsen, "An Enemy of the People"
No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
There are moments that stop the heart, that catch the breath, that halt the beat of blood in your veins, and you are suspended in time, held between life and death, and you wait for something to bring you back again. ~Robert Cormier, Fade
Psychology: (103.) Unk, the big trouble with dumb bastards is they are too dumb to believe there is such a thing as being smart. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan
You could reason with someone who was halfway educated and appeal to his intelligence, but I felt helpless in the face of utter stupidity. ~Robert Cormier, Fade
There is nothing that cuts you down to size like coming to some strange and marvelous place where no one even stops to notice that you stare about you. ~Richard Adams, Watership Down
The supreme ordeal, let us say rather, the only ordeal, is the loss of the beloved being. ~Victor Hugo, Les Misrebles
It's lovely to know that the world can't interfere with the inside of your head. ~Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes
How can I trust memory, which slips and wobbles and grinds its erratic furrows like a bald-tired truck fighting for traction on a wet gumbo road? ~Mary Clearman Blew, "The Sow in the River"
No matter what comes before or after, leaving's the only thing people remember. ~Neidy Messer, "Legend in a Small Town"
This knowledge has stayed with me longest, how we resist what we know to be true and blame the makeup of our bodies in their endless beauty, reminders of what we must leave and come to, the ivory and roses of flesh bringing us hallelujahs of ecstasy echoing long after decay has begun. ~Kim Barnes, "The Smell of Rain"
It is strange people should be so greedy, when they are alone in the world! ~Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change. ~Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
You musn't think so badly of me. I'm no more egotistical or ambitious than most. ~Henrik Ibsen, "An Enemy of the People"
What Beatrice had done with her face, actually, was what any plain girl could do. She had overlaid it with dignity, suffering, intelligence, and a piquant dash of bitchiness. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan
Time is dead as long as it's being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life. ~William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives. ~Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues, and this is mine: I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Wherever you come near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense... ~Thornton Wilder, "Our Town"
Of what a strange nature is knowledge! It clings to the mind, when it has once seized on it, like a lichen on the rock. ~Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
Alas, for the effects of bad tea and bad temper! ~Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
The minute you get religion you stop thinking. Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas. ~Ray Bradbury, "The Next in Line"
Anyway, I jabber too much. That's why I don't do anything. Or maybe it's the other way around. I jabber because I don't do anything. ~Fydor Dosteyevsky, Crime and Punishment
"Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?" "Every one of them," Yossarian told him. "Every one of whom?" "Every one of whom do you think?" "I haven't any idea." "Then how do you know they aren't?" ~Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Clevinger had a mind, and Lieutenant Scheisskopf had noticed that people with minds tended to get pretty smart at times.~Joseph Heller, Catch-22
"Why don't you ever whip me?" she pouted one night. "Because I haven't the time," he snapped at her impatiently. "I haven't the time. Don't you know there's a parade going on?"~Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.~Joseph Heller, Catch-22
You see? You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!~Joseph Heller, Catch-22
I feel like I'm addicted to the printed word. ~Paula Danzinger, The Cat Ate My Gymsuit)
Words are all we have. ~Samuel Beckett
I have no scepter, but I have a pen. ~Voltaire
The story was writing itself and I was having a hard time keeping up with it. ~Ernest Hemingway
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. ~Joesph Addison
All words are pegs to hang ideas on. ~Henry Ward Beecher
I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. ~Jorge Luis Borges
And that is the great question-will I ever be able to write well? I want to so much. ~Anne Frank
Books are like truth serum-if you don't read, you can't tell what's real. ~Freak the Mighty, Rodman Philbrick
Startop, younger in years and appearance, was reading and holding his head as if he thought himself in danger of exploding it with too strong a charge of knowledge. ~Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look into thy heart, and write." ~Sir Philip Sidney
All words are spiritual-nothing is more spiritual than words. ~Walt Whitman, An American Primer
What beauty there is in words! What a lurking curious charm in the sound some words! ~Walt Whitman
Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism. ~Hunter S. Thompson
Writing is one of the few professions in which you can psychoanalyze yourself, get rid of hostilities and frustrations in public, and get paid for it. ~Octavia Butler
The standards by which you judge human beings don't apply to journalists. ~A.E. Maxwell
When it comes to arrogance and power, the only people who make lawyers look good are journalists. ~Steven Brill
Somewhere in the dim recesses of the journalistic soul lies the horrible suspicion: This is really a pretty shallow-and maybe unseemly-way for a grownup to make a living. ~Andrew Ferguson
There's this whole idea that you've got the blues and you're going to write. Bullshit. When I feel really bad, all I want to do is sit in front of the TV with the remote control and check out. ~Lucinda Williams
Every writing career starts as a personal quest for sainthood, for self-betterment. Sooner or later, and as a rule quite soon, a man discovers that his pen accomplishes a lot more than his soul. ~Joseph Brodsky
The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. ~Anais Nin
A writer must take risks, defy the odds, be a bit obsessed and a little mad. ~Robert Cormier
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends, and the most patient of teachers. ~Charles Eliot
I think it's a terrible responsibility for a journalist, if he neglects an opportunity that might bring more freedom to the humble and oppressed masses. ~Henrik Ibsen, "An Enemy of the People"
The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he absorbed it. ~Walt Whitman
Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing. ~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Never mind there's a good film showing tonight/Where they hang everybody who can read and write/Oh that could never happen here but then again it might ~Elvis Costello
If we were a people more given to revealing secrets, we might raise monuments and sacrifice to the memories of our poets, but slavery cured us of that weakness. It may be enough, however, to have it said that we survive in exact relationship to the dedication of our poets (includes preachers, musicians and blues singers). ~Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Saturate yourself with poetry. It teaches a leanness of expression and a quality of rhythm. ~Jules Loh
A word is dead/When it is said./Some say./I say it just/Begins to live/That day. ~Emily Dickinson
There's something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: "I'll go take a hot bath."~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell.~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Dying/Is an art, like everything else./I do it exceptionally well. ~Sylvia Plath, "Lady Lazarus"
I am not cruel, only truthful ~Sylvia Plath, "Mirror"
I am outcast on a cold star, unable to feel anything but an awful helpless numbness. I look down into the warm, earthy world. Into a nest of lovers' beds, baby cribs, meal tables, all the solid commerce of life in this earth, and feel apart, enclosed in a wall of glass. ~Sylvia Plath
I want, I think, to be omniscient. I think I would like to call myself "the girl who wanted to be God." Yet if I were not in this body where would I be-perhaps I am destined to be classified and qualified. But, oh, I cry out against it.~Sylvia Plath
Never...commit suicide, because something unexpected always happens. ~Sylvia Plath
In spite of everything, I still have my good old sense of humor.~Sylvia Plath
I can't think logically about who I am or where I am going. I have been very ecstatic, horribly depressed, shocked, elated, enlightened, and enervated. ~Sylvia Plath
I believe that one should be able to control and manipulate experiences, even the most terrifying, like madness, being tortured...with an informed and intelligent mind.~Sylvia Plath
I am I--I am powerful, but to what extent? I am I.~Sylvia Plath
All obscurity/Starts with a danger. ~Sylvia Plath, "Full Fathom Five"
I'm sarcastic, skeptical, and sometimes callous because I'm still afraid, deep down, of letting myself be hurt.~Sylvia Plath
I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root./It is what you fear./I do not fear it: I have been there. ~Sylvia Plath, "Elm"
The blood jet is poetry/There is no stopping it. ~Sylvia Plath, "Kindness"
I can't deceive myself out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future, which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.~Sylvia Plath
Pretty soon, the only doubt in my mind was the precise time and method of committing suicide. The only alternative I could see was an eternity of hell for the rest of my life in a mental hospital, and I was going to use my last ounce of free choice and choose a quick clean ending.~Sylvia Plath
Death may whiten in sun or out of it. ~Sylvia Plath, "Moonrise"
The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,/Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars/Letting in the light, peephole after peephole--/A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things. ~Sylvia Plath, "Insomniac"
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,/And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,/Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed. ~Sylvia Plath
I myself am the vessel of tragic experience.~Sylvia Plath
What I hate is the idea of being under a man's thumb. A man doesn't have a worry in the world, while I've got a baby hanging over my head like a big stick, to keep me in line.~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
How did I know that someday-at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere-the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Over coffee and orange juice the embryonic suicide brightens visibly. ~Sylvia Plath
When you give someone your whole heart, and he doesn't want it, you cannot take it back, it's gone forever.~Sylvia Plath
Let's face it: I'm scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess, I'm afraid for myself...the old primitive urge for survival. It's getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity.~Sylvia Plath
I've got to have something. I want to stop it all, the whole monumental grotesque joke, before it's too late. But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good.~Sylvia Plath
Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams.~Sylvia Plath
If I didn't think, I'd be much happier; if I didn't have any sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time.~Sylvia Plath
If only I can find him...the man who will be intelligent, yet physically magnetic and personable. If I can offer that combination, why shouldn't I expect it in a man?~Sylvia Plath
If they substituted the word "lust" for "love" in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.~Sylvia Plath
I don't care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual.~Sylvia Plath
Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship-but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.~Sylvia Plath
The reason I haven't been writing in this book for so long is partly that I haven't had one decent coherent thought to put down.~Sylvia Plath
I think I am worthwhile just because I have optical nerves and can try to put down what they perceive. What a fool!~Sylvia Plath
Not to be sentimental, as I sound, but why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?~Sylvia Plath
To yearn for an organism of the opposite sex to comprehend and heighten your thoughts and instincts, and to realize that most American males worship woman as a sex machine with rounded breasts and a convenient opening in the vagina, as a painted doll who shouldn't have a thought in her pretty head other than cooking a steak dinner and comforting him in bed after a hard 9-5 day at a routine business job.~Sylvia Plath
I want to express my being as fully as I can because I somewhere picked up the idea that I can justify my being alive that way.~Sylvia Plath
I dislike being a girl, because as such I must come to realize that I cannot be a man.~Sylvia Plath
I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad, or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.~Sylvia Plath
And you grit your teeth, despising yourself for your tremulous sensitivity, and wondering how human beings can suffer their individualities to be mercilessly crushed under a machinelike dictatorship, be it of industry, state or organization, all their lives long.~Sylvia Plath
Some pale, hueless flicker of sensitivity is in me. God, must I lose it in cooking scrambled eggs for a man...~Sylvia Plath
It is sad to be able only to mouth other poets. I want someone to mouth me.~Sylvia Plath
Why am I obsessed with the idea I can justify myself by getting manuscripts published? Is it an escape-an excuse for any social failure-so I can say "No, I don't go out for many extracurricular activities, but I spend a lot of time writing."~Sylvia Plath
Do I like to write? Why? About what? Will I give up and say, "Living and feeding a man's insatiable guts and begetting children occupies my whole life. Don't have time to write"?~Sylvia Plath
I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit.~Sylvia Plath
Happy! That is indefinable as far as states of being go.~Sylvia Plath
Above all, CAN A SELFISH EGO-CENTRIC JEALOUS AND UNIMAGINATIVE FEMALE WRITE A DAMN THING WORTHWHILE?~Sylvia Plath
Why can't I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is most becoming? ~Sylvia Plath
Rest and be kind. ~Jack Kerouac, The Golden Eternity
...the stars are coming out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear...~Jack Kerouac
Thinking/Is just like not thinking/So I don't have to think/any more ~Jack Kerouac
What is the feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plan till you see their specks dispersing?~Jack Kerouac
Wild typewritten pages for yr own amusement ~Jack Kerouac, "20 essentials for modern prose"
I'm a triple trombone fool... ~Jack Kerouac
Not much time to say much in the heat of wild manifold activities this very minute... ~Jack Kerouac, letter to Neal Cassady
Absolutely no way to escape enigmans.~Jack Kerouac
(see actually I'm not old and sick at all but the maddest liver in the world right now as well as the best watcher and that's no sneezing thing ~Jack Kerouac
...rolling through October climaxes of leaves falling and Halloween soon and I got red October shirt on me so sad that every year we have to lose our October!~Jack Kerouac
I'd also gone through an entire year of celibacy based on my feeling that lust was the direct cause of birth which was the direct cause of suffering and death. ~Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
In fact I realized I had no guts anyway, which I've long known. But I have joy. ~Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Pain or love or danger makes you real again.~Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
The only alternative to sleeping out, hopping freights, and doing what I wanted, I saw in a vision would be to just sit with a hundred other patients in front of a nice television set in a madhouse, where we could be "supervised."~Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
The Four Inevitabilities: 1. Musty Books. 2. Uninteresting Nature. 3. Dull Existence. 4. Blank Nirvana, buy that boy.~Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.~Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
This above all else; To thine own self be true. ~William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Nothing is but what is not! ~William Shakespeare
True, I talk of dreams/which are the children of an idle brain/Begot of nothing but vain fantasy/which is as thin a substance as the air. ~William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
CASSIUS: Will you dine with me tomorrow? CASCA: Ay, if I be alive, and your mind hold, and your dinner worth the eating. ~William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Ay me! For aught, that I could ever read,/Could ever hear by tale or history,/The course of true love never did run smooth. ~William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays. ~William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Lovers and madmen have such seething brains,/Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend/More than cool reason ever comprehends./The lunatic, the lover, and the poet,/Are of imagination all compact. ~William Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream"
Love all/Trust a few/Do harm to none.~William Shakespeare
When angry count to ten, when very angry, swear. ~Mark Twain
Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.~Mark Twain
Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and be proven one. ~Mark Twain
Every year you wait, long ago gets farther away.~Mark Twain
There is no accounting for human beings.~Mark Twain
My heart got to thumping. You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns. ~Mark Twain, A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.~Mark Twain
No man, deep down in the privacy of his heart, has any considerable respect for himself.~Mark Twain
You get so alone at times that it just makes sense. ~Charles Bukowski
A thing of beauty is a joy forever. ~John Keats
Give me books, fruit, French wine, and fine weather and a little music out-of-doors played by someone I do not know. ~John Keats
This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang, but a whimper. ~T.S. Eliot
Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries. ~Theodore Roethke
The best way out is through. ~Robert Frost
Nothing gold can stay. ~Robert Frost
Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know in this world, and all ye need to know. ~John Keats
Rich in the simple worship of a day. ~John Keats
It is raining--/I guess I'll make/some tea ~Gary Snyder
It's hard being a person/We all know that. ~William Stafford
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. ~Emily Dickinson
Light tomorrow with today! ~Elizabeth Barrett Browning
I play it cool/And dig all jive./That's the reason/I stay alive./My motto,/As I live and learn,/is:/Dig and Be Dug/In Return. ~Langston Hughes
Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by. ~Carl Sandburg
We have lingered in the chambers/of the sea/By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed/red and brown/Till human voices wake us,/and we drown ~T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
And is Heaven any different from where we are? How could it be better or worse? ~Allen Ginsberg, Iron Horse
In communist countries, you execute your poets. In the free world, the poets execute themselves. ~Kate Braverman
What we don't know will hurt us,/but not yet. Tomorrow/is a tease, forever gaining in accuracy/what it lacks in momentum,/rising and falling, setting us up like dust/in the bright crosshairs. ~Dorothy Barresi, "Chin Music (II)"
Do I dare/Disturb the universe?/In a minute there is time/For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse. ~T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Do I contradict myself?/Very well then I contradict myself,/(I am large, I contain multitudes.) ~Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
All positions/Are prisons./No truth is true. ~Robert Bringhurst, "Nagarjuna"
I cried over beautiful things knowing no beautiful thing lasts. ~Carl Sandburg, "Autumn Movement"
If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane. ~Jimmy Buffet
There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror. ~Orson Welles
Gentlemen! Please accept my resignation. I don't care to belong to any organization that will accept me as a member. ~Groucho Marx
Life is too important to be taken seriously. ~Oscar Wilde
One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I'll never know. ~Groucho Marx
No one is ever too busy for cheese! ~Sue Ann Nivens
In this world there are two tragedies-not getting what you want, and getting it. ~Oscar Wilde
Everything is funny as long as it happens to somebody else. ~Will Rogers
Humor is emotional chaos, remembered in tranquility. ~James Thurber
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. ~Groucho Marx
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there. ~Charles F. Kettering
That is the best--to laugh with someone because you both think the same things are funny. ~Gloria Vanderbilt
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before. ~Mae West
Among those who I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. ~W.H. Auden
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. ~Albert Einstein
It is the center of the humor universe, New York. That is where all humor is born. Everything else is just imitating that. ~Jerry Seinfeld
I'm idioting all the way to the bank! ~Jon Lovitz
We're all very screwed up individuals. We come from broken homes, and we have emotional problems and this is our way of working things out. If we didn't have this venue, we'd probably be serial killers or something. ~Scott Dikkers, The Onion
Optimist Half Full of Shit ~The Onion June 21, 2000
May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house. ~George Carlin
How theraputic it is to surrond yourself with people stranger than yourself. ~Spalding Gray
Indignation is well and good in doses, but I noticed fairly early in life that some people live to find stuff to be indignant about. And it's pretty unattractive. That's why I decided to become a wiseass. ~Al Franken
Among Freud's least quoted statements, but to me one of his most comforting, is "The only thing about masturbation to be ashamed of is doing it badly." ~Al Franken
What moron said that knowledge is power? Knowledge is power only if it doesn't depress you so much that it leaves you in an immobile heap at the end of your bed. ~Paula Poundstone
I am not religious, but Satan certainly plays into my life. ~Marc Maron
I'm a psychic amnesiac. I know in advance what I'll forget. ~Michael McShane
If God dropped acid, would he see people? ~Stephen Wright
I don't do drugs anymore cos I find that I get the same effect just by standing up really fast. ~Johnathan Katz
I like to think that restraining orders are common among seekers and dreamers such as myself. ~Janeane Garafalo
It is perfectly normal, healthy, and right-minded to heap ill will upon those more fortunate and attractive.~Janeane Garafalo
Liberation from cumbersome ideas and glad tidings leaves one free to use sarcastic barbs and derisive statements. It's a cosmic system of checks and balances kept harmonious by your decision to loathe the attractive for no good reason.~Janeane Garafalo
Don't bother being nice. Being popular and well liked is not in your best interest. Let me be more clear; if you behave in a manner pleasing to most, then you are probably doing something wrong. The masses have never been arbiters of the sublime, and they often fail to recognize the truly great individual. Taking into account the public's regrettable lack of taste, it is incumbent upon you not to fit in.~Janeane Garafalo
"A pretty face is your best asset this season." As opposed to last season, when all the ugly girls had a free ride all the way through.~Janeane Garafalo
We've got people unconcious on the set! How could we not have a great show? ~David Letterman
I ate a cheesecake, I took a nap. What more can one man do? ~Jay Sherman, The Critic
Without comfortable shoes, the rest of life is chaos. ~Cliff, Cheers
I'm a big! Raving!! SKEPTIC!!! ~Bill Nye
They're very sexy cars, mini-vans. ~Matt Lauer
All I want to do is change the world. ~Bill Nye
I'm trying to let my curiousity take a backseat to my sanity. ~Dave Nelson, NewsRadio
Any situation is dangerous if you look at it with enough paranoia. ~Joe,NewsRadio
They did it because they're stupid. That's why everybody does everything. ~Homer Simpson
Pretend is for little girls and mental patients. ~Jimmy James, NewsRadio
Are you challenging my constitutional right to make nude phone calls? ~Bill McNeal, NewsRadio
Must be nice to hope for the thing you wish to want. ~Jeri Blank, Strangers with Candy
You know, lately I find myself recurringly gripped by an overwhelming desire to smack our entire country upside its collective head. ~Dennis Miller
Are we stupid or were we always this stupid?~Dennis Miller
I was so desperate that when I told my friends "Hey, there are other fish in the sea," I meant other fish. Folks, what I'm saying is, I fucked saltwater seafood.~Dennis Miller
And what's with the dancing candy film they run before the movie starts, huh? If the candy can dance and, for that matter, play musical instruments, why should I get up, go to the snack bar, and buy the candy? Why can't it just walk down the fucking aisle and meet me at my seat, okay? Let's go, Goobers, put down the trombone, come here, and let me eat you.~Dennis Miller
You know, there are many mysteries in life. Many things I can't understand. And I attribute most of them to...Claymation.~Dennis Miller
I myself am not a racist. I figure, why hate someone based on the color of their skin, when if you really get to know someone, you can find so many more valid reasons to loathe an individual.~Dennis Miller
He confuses love and abuse, so we have that in common. ~Scott Thompson
I do not put bees on my scrotum until it's swollen, as a fetish. ~Scott Thompson
That's what I do for a living, man. I blow minds. ~Dave Foley
Every comedian secretly wants to be a rock star, and conversely, every rock star secretly wants to be a comedian. ~Kevin McDonald
And I myself am just another freak. ~Steely Dan, "Fire in the Hole"
When life looks like easy street there is danger at your door. ~The Grateful Dead, "Uncle John's Band"
One man gathers what another man spills. ~Grateful Dead, "St. Stephen"
Without music life would be a mistake. ~Gottried Wilhelm
It comes down to reality/And that's fine with me cos I've let it slide. ~Billy Joel, "New York State of Mind"
I'll let you be in my dream if I can be in yours. ~Bob Dylan
I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints/The sinners are much more fun. ~Billy Joel, "Only the Good Die Young"
I don't understand why half of the world is still crying, and the other half is still crying too. They can't get it together, man. ~Janis Joplin
When I'm with you/I feel like I could die and that would be all right. ~Third Eye Blind, "Semi-Charmed Kind of Life"
Escapism figures heavily in the themes of a folk singer. ~Shawn Colvin
I just have to laugh to keep from hurting bad. ~Everclear, "Normal Like You"
I don't buy everything I read/I haven't even read everything I've bought. ~Barenaked Ladies, "This is Where It Ends"
I need a steam shovel, mama/To keep away the dead/I need a dump truck baby/To unload my head ~Bob Dylan, "From a Buick Six"
Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief/all kill their inspiration and sing about the grief. ~U2, "The Fly"
You're an accident waiting to happen/You're a piece of glass left there on the beach. ~U2, "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses"
Such a nice day/to throw your life away/such a nice day/to let it go. ~U2, "Wire"
As we approach Manchester I say, "Well, of course, Bono, everybody must be asking you about all the references to oral sex in your new songs…" "WHAT?" Bono sputters. "Bill, you've turned to the wrong page in your notebook. You're asking me Prince questions!" Listen, I say, to these lines from recent U2 songs: "Surrounding me, going down on me," "You can swallow or you can spit," "Here she comes, six and nine again," "Did I leave a bad taste in your mouth"... "Ahh." Bono mumbles something about sixty-nine being one of the most equal sexual positions and then strongly suggests we get onto another subject. ~Bill Flanagan, U2 At the End of the World
Baby a dangerous idea that almost makes sense. ~U2, "Love is Blindness"
We thought that we had the answers/it was the questions we had wrong. ~U2, "11 O'Clock Tick-Tock"
Remember, children, taste is the enemy of art. ~Bono
I'm alone in this world/and a fucked up world it is too. ~U2, "Wake Up Dead Man"
And you hunger for the time/time to heal, desire time/and your earth moves beneath your own dream landscape. ~U2, "A Sort of Homecoming"
Bono, a small, intense figure in black leather pants, black shirt and black boots, possesses a certain brooding charm, though refreshingly enough neither he nor other members of the band attempt to capitalize on any inherent sexiness. A female fan who made it onto the stage was sent on her way with a friendly, brotherly hug. ~Chicago Tribune 1985
A lot of rock 'n' roll is banal ideas well executed. Wheras I think a lot of what we do is really very interesting ideas, badly executed. ~Bono
I'm a naturally gifted procrastinator and avoider of things that are not absolute. ~Edge
Hitler had real problems of overcompensation. Maybe he wouldn't have needed to conquer Europe if he'd just been a little taller and had both balls. ~Bono
Humour is the evidence of freedom. ~Bono
Just as a nervous breakdown may be the sane response to insane circumstances-for example, combat-art may be sort of a safety response to violent stimulus. For example, the news. ~Bono
Bass players attract the weirdest fans. I tend to get the bespectacled MIT students. Bono gets the poets. And Larry, unfortunately, gets the girls. We should have gotten a Ringo. ~Edge
"Oh yeah," remembers Bono. "That was ambient before ambient. We were piggybacking Brian Eno a little bit but we brought a certain [long pause as Bono stares across the room] earth to it…" Edge starts to laugh. "It's amazing the way you come out with these things. Earth! How can you roll out with something like that?" Bono just grins.
Revolution starts at home, in your heart, in your refusal to compromise your beliefs and your values. I'm not interested in politics like fighting back with sticks and stones, but in the politics of love. I think there is nothing more radical than two people's loving each other, because it's so infrequent. ~Bono
I sometimes think it might have been a mistake-you picked up the wrong guy! Look, I'm built more like a mechanic or something, a carpenter. I mean, take a look at these hands--these are the hands of a bricklayer. ~Bono
We're a bunch of noisy, rough Irishmen that are arrogant enough to drag their tails all the way around the world, and I think that's something to be proud of. ~Adam Clayton
See, I'm a guy with no midrange. I'm all bottom and all top, emotionally. I let people take advantage of me way past the point others let people go. But when I break, I really break. Watch out. ~Bono
I wouldn't take on the job of making people aware of reality. I'd take on the job of making myself aware of reality. ~Bono
I could go on stage, unzip my pants, and hang my dick out and people would think it was some statement about something. ~Bono
Campaigning for Jubilee 2000 makes sense...the thing about music is it often doesn't…you've no choice of subject matter...you write what's in your heart and your mind unless of course it's crap, in which case it usually means you've thought about it too much. ~Bono
Put flowers in the mud, baby. ~U2, "Zoorpopa"
Uncertainty can be a guiding light. ~U2, "Zooropa"
Frisbeterians believe that when they die their soul goes up on the roof and they can't get it down. ~Bono
I think that Edge is the head of the band, I'm the heart, and Adam and Larry are the feet. ~Bono
It's hard to believe, hard to be a believer when you see the way things are in the world. But I am a believer! ~Bono
I don't think Larry ever liked the idea of being a pop star and I think it's great that in the same band you've got Bono who's like, you know, the whole-the stage is like a platform shoe, it's like a chance for him to get out and be noticed and then there's Larry hiding behind the drum kit. ~Edge
They say that nervous breakdown is the sane response of people in insane situations, and I think that a sense of humour is our only protection right now. ~Bono
It is a remarkable thing to think that we can, if we get up off our ass, change the world. ~Bono
Living is easy with eyes closed. ~The Beatles, "Strawberry Fields Forever"
Every day, in every way, it's getting better and better. ~John Lennon, "Beautiful Boy"
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy/Are crossing through my open mind ~The Beatles, "Across the Universe"
All right, so flower power didn't work. So what. We start again. ~John Lennon
People ask me questions/Lost in confusion/Well I tell them there's no problems/Only solutions. ~John Lennon, "Watching the Wheels"
Surrealism to me is reality. Psychedelic vision is reality to me and always was. ~John Lennon
I don't mind writing or reading or watching or speaking, but sex is the only physical thing I can be bothered with any more. ~John Lennon
Some people wear their smile like a disguise/those people that smile a lot, watch the eyes/I know because I'm like that a lot/You think everything's ok and it is, 'til it's not. ~Ani DiFranco, "Outta Me, Onto You"
I think you're the least fucked-up person I've ever met/And that may be as close to the real thing as I ever get. ~Ani DiFranco, "The Diner"
When I say you sucked my brain out/the English translation/Is I am in love with you/and it is no fun. ~Ani DiFranco, "Dilate"
I'm singing now because my tear ducts are too tired/my mind is disconnected, but my heart is wired. ~Ani DiFranco, "Fire Door"
Like a poem badly written/We are verses out of rhythm/Couplets out of rhyme/In syncopated time ~Simon and Garfunkel, "The Dangling Conversation"
Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest. ~Simon and Garfunkel, "The Boxer"
I have my books and my poetry to protect me. ~Simon and Garfunkel, "I Am a Rock"
Preserve your memories/They're all that's left you. ~Simon and Garfunkel, "Bookends"
Sometimes even music can't substitute for tears. ~Paul Simon
I thought I had mono for an entire year once, but it turned out I was just really bored. ~Wayne's World
Valerie, are we limp and hard to manage? ~Earth Girls Are Easy
This is my room. It's kind of a total mess. Sort of like my life. ~Dexter, The Tall Guy
Jane is a pretty typical teenager. Angry, insecure, confused. I wish I could tell her that's all gonna pass, but I don't wanna lie to her. ~Lester Burnham, American Beauty
There's nothing worse in life than being ordinary. ~Angela Hayes, American Beauty
The secret, I don't know. I guess you've just got to find something you love to do and then do it for the rest of your life. ~Max Fischer, Rushmore
Sometimes it's interesting to see just how bad bad writing can be. ~Joe Gillis, Sunset Blvd.
Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. ~Helen Keller
The time is always right to do what is right. ~Rev.Martin Luther King, Jr.
I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than be a success at something I hate. ~George Burns
Be curious always! For knowledge will not acquire you; you must acquire it. ~Sydie Back
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. ~Albert Einstein
You are what you are--and not what people think you are. ~O.W. Polen
Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true. ~Richard Bach
The more passions and desires one has, the more ways one has of being happy. ~Charlotte Catherine
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. ~The Dalai Lama
People think there's something wrong with anyone who's a little bit different. I say screw 'em. ~Dennis Rodman
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. ~Will Rogers
If you study life deeply, its profundity will seize you suddenly with dizziness. ~Albert Scweitzer
All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. ~Anais Nin
Reality is something you rise above. ~Liza Minelli
Dreams are necessary to life. ~Anais Nin
To be great is to be misunderstood. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Delight in the little things. ~Rudyard Kipling
Doubt whom you will, but never yourself. ~Christine Bovie
There is no way to know before experiencing. ~Robert Anthony
No love, no friendship can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever. ~Francois Mauriac
It's taken me all my life to understand that it is not necessary to understand everything. ~Rene Coty
A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
You don't get to choose how you're going to die or when. You only decide how you're going to live. Now. ~Joan Baez
I like a little rebellion now and then. The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on occasion that I wish it to be always kept alive. ~Thomas Jefferson
And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more. ~Erica Jong
You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. ~Colette
Life itself is the proper binge. ~Julia Child
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. ~Helen Keller
Look twice before you leap. ~Charlotte Bronte
Why not seize the pleasure at once? How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation! ~Jane Austen
You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you. ~Mary Tyler Moore
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. ~Agatha Christie
If you have made mistakes…there is always another chance for you...you may have a fresh start at any moment you choose, for this thing we call "failure" is not the falling down, but the staying down. ~Mary Pickford
Some things…arrive on their own mysterious hour, on their own terms and not yours, to be seized or relinquished forever. ~Gail Godwin
Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life. ~Sophia Loren
It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head. ~Sally Kempton
We can only learn to love by loving. ~Iris Murdoch
Just remember, we're all in this alone. ~Lily Tomlin
One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done. ~Marie Curie
Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself. ~Doris Lessing
I am never afraid of what I know. ~Anna Sewell
Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got. ~Janis Joplin
A little of what you fancy does you good. ~Marie Lloyd
If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time. ~Edith Wharton
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next. ~Ursula K. Le Guin
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. ~Henry David Thoreau
We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour, in other words, we are the hero of our own story. ~Mary McCarthy
The beautiful thing about learning is no one can take it away from you. ~B.B. King
A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are the portals of discovery. ~James Joyce
True power is knowing that you can, but you don't. ~Juliet Alicia Jarvis
If you have tried to build castles in the air, your work need not be lost--that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. ~Henry David Thoreau
I share no man's opinions; I have my own. ~Ivan Sergeyevich
As long as I live, I will have control over my being. ~Artemisia Gentileschi
Love=Art=Disease=Pain=Life ~Jonathan Larson
Believe me: the reward is not as great without the struggle. ~Wilma Rudolph
All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind wake in the day to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible. ~T.E. Lawrence
Youth is wholly experimental. ~Robert Louis Stevenson
Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act. ~Truman Capote
It is the blessing of old friends that you can be stupid with them. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am one of those/Melodramatic fools/Neurotic to the bone no doubt about it. ~Green Day, "Basket Case"
My head is sometimes heavy, and it often burns, my thoughts are confused. ~Vincent van Gogh
I'm half alive but I feel mostly dead. ~Jewel, "You Were Meant for Me"
I'm crazy and chemically imbalanced. ~City of Angels
When I was 14, it was cool to be depressed, all moody-broody. My mom would drive me home from ballet and I'd stare out the window all pensive and sad, sighing with my little Tupperware snack. ~Jenna Elfman
He seemed a fool--everyone who didn't feel like me was a fool. I alone knew the truth about life, knew that it was all a miserable downward spiral that you could either admit to or ignore, but sooner or later we were all going to die. ~Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
Skepticism turns to cynicism, which leads to apathy and despair, which can cause sleeplessness, dry-mouth, and loss of sex drive. ~Al Franken
I have loved and I have waited/Been picked up and been sedated/Mental health is overrated. ~Barenaked Ladies, "This is Where It Ends"
Why should I live? Why should I do anything? Is there in life any purpose which the inevitable death that awaits me does not undo and destroy? ~Leo Tolstoy
Depression is a lot like that: Slowly, over the years, the data will accumulate in your heart and mind, a computer program for total negativity will build into your system, making life feel more and more unbearable. But you won't even notice it coming on, thinking that it is somehow normal, something about getting older, about turning eight or turning twelve or turning fifteen, and then one day you realize your entire life is just awful, not worth living, a horror and a black blot on the white terrain of human existence. One morning you wake up afraid you are going to live. ~Elizabeth Wurtzel, Prozac Nation
It's no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. ~Krishnamurti
Late March is nasty and incorrigible in New York. The weather sucks, hacking up its final globs of winter phlegm. If you're not an obsessed hoops fan it's a good time to commit suicide. ~Arthur W. Bahr, Certifiably Insane
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,/And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,/And ceas'd the moment life appear'd./All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,/And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier. ~Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
I disconnected my heart and cut myself on the wire. ~The Wallflowers, "Josephine"
"The insane, on occasion, are not without their charms," said Beatrice. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan
In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up"
A REASON TO LIVE. You must have a reason why. My reasoning is gone. May I rest in pieces. ~Personal ad in The San Diego Reader
If you want to kill yourself, you should be allowed to. ~Ed Viesturs
Death is the only really serious preoccupation in life. ~Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Christo
We are all mad at some time or another. ~Battista Mantanus
If a man is in a minority of one, we lock him up. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
Alas! life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated. ~Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
O God, God,/How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable/Seem to me all the uses of this world! ~William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being, like a worm. ~Jean-Paul Sartre
You must realize, sir, that such blows not only fail to inflict pain, they are actually a pleasure...I could not get along without them. ~Fydor Dosteyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Razors pain you;/Rivers are damp;/Acids stain you;/And drugs cause cramp;/Guns aren't lawful;/Nooses give;/Gas smells awful;/You might as well live. ~Dorothy Parker
To save a man's life against his will is the same as killing him. ~Horace
Don't ever underestimate the psycho factor in my head. ~Jay Mohr
One is not born a woman, one becomes one. ~Simone de Beuvoir
Plain women know more about men than beautiful ones do. ~Katherine Hepburn
One of the things about equality is not just that you be treated equally to a man, but that you treat yourself equally to the way you treat a man. ~Marlo Thomas
In a perfect world, mothers would remind their daughters each morning of how beautiful their strong noses are, or how special their curly red hair is. ~Bobbi Brown
In my journals, from when I was 15, I'm talking about how fat I am. It's an absolute mantra. But if I have to do a nude scene, I won't fudge it, I won't lose 20 pounds, because I don't want to screw up young women the way I was screwed up by magazines and images. ~Emma Thompson
I had been a feminist all my life, but the big problem was how to make your feminism jibe with you unappeasable hunger for male bodies. ~Erica Jong, Fear of Flying
Your mother lied; looks are everything, and the sooner you submit and stop denying the inevitable, the happier you will be. ~Janeane Garafalo
I have heard that storytelling starts with the body and ends with the body...but as a woman I worry about this. For most women, the body, like the story, is not a simple thing. It's a battlefield where lies and truths about power go at it. A woman's mind might wander from skirt to skirt in that smoky place like a dislocated child, looking for some grounded legs to stand by, or on, for years. The woman might end up knowing herself only as a casualty, or recognizing herself only by her scars. While there may be some truth to such an identity, it is only a partial truth, and a potentially destructive one. I want a different story. ~Leslie Ryan, "The Other Side of Fire"
If I helped at all, I helped the notion that it's okay for a woman to be an athlete, to be competitive, to be tough. ~Chris Everet
I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise. ~Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
The view that women are infantile and emotional creatures, and as such, incapable of responsibility and independence is the work of the masculine tendency to lower women's self-respect. ~Karen Horney
The thin, narrow-shouldered ectomorph who was yesterday's spinster librarian is today's high fashion model; the plump and buxom endomorph who was a Victorian romantic ideal today is eating cottage cheese and grapefruit, and weighing in every Tuesday at Weight Watchers. ~Phyllis Bronstein-Burrows
In the eyes of God or biology or what have you, it is just very important to have women. ~Nornal Talal
So-against odds, women inch forwards. ~Eleanor Roosevelt
Animals are such agreeable friends. ~George Eliot
I love both puppies and kitties. I could just scrunch up their little faces! ~Jeff Goldblum
Cats yawn because they realize that there's nothing to do. ~Jack Kerouac
All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog. ~Franz Kafka
There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face. ~Ben Williams
I petted the dogs who didn't argue with me ever. All dogs love God. They're wiser than their masters. ~Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
We are never so helplessly alone as when we lose love. ~Sigmund Freud
Sometimes I sits and I thinks, and sometimes I just sits. ~Satchel Paige
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. ~Pablo Picasso
I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life. ~Albert Einstein
Make no formed conceptions about the realness of existence nor about the unrealness of existence. ~Diamond Sutra
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. ~Soren Kierkegaard
People change and forget to tell each other. ~Lillian Hellman
High expectations and your own bag of chips. ~Dogbert's secret of happiness
We are a species that needs a frontier. Every time humanity stretches itself, turns a corner, it receives a jolt of productive vitality that can last for centuries. ~Carl Sagan
But there aren't enough hours in the day to do everything you want to do the way you want to do it. ~Noah Wyle
Tuna salad! I just realized the power I have. I can make any bizarre reference, and by the obligation of your writer's creed, you would have to print it. ~Greg Kinnear
I find it weird that people say I'm weird. ~Nicolas Cage
Rock hard, eat hard, sleep hard, grow big, wear glasses if you need 'em. ~Webb Wilder
There ain't no answer. There ain't going to be an any answer. There never has been an answer. That's the answer. ~Gertrude Stein
Looking back over my life so far I am able to remember specific days that were perfect. These tend to be days, and parts of days, in which nothing in particular happened, except that I was utterly happy. ~Daniel Pinkwater
Love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going. ~Tennessee Williams
Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one. ~Johann Wolfgang van Goethe
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. ~William James
You look in anybody's eyes, you can see the universe if you're really lookin'. ~George Carlin
Always there remain portions of our heart into which no one is able to enter, invite them as we may. ~Mary Dixon Thayer
Fact is after all a kind of mindreading. ~Sarah Orne Jewett
One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don't come home at night. ~Margaret Mead
Fond as we are of our loved ones, there comes at times during their absence an unexplained peace. ~Anne Shaw
I'll not listen to reason. Reason always means what someone else has got to say. ~Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. ~Twyla Tharp
There is no greater burden than great potential. ~Charles M. Schulz
As soon as you're interested in what is good taste, then you're in bad taste land already. What's comfortable and what represents your life, what's unique and individual about you, that's style. ~Jeff Goldblum
The heart wants what it wants. There's no logic to those things. You meet someone and you fall in love and that's that. ~Woody Allen
There's no limit to how complicated things can get, on account of one thing always leading to another. ~E.B. White
Love is universal. About as universal as rage. They're one and the same. ~Robin Wright Penn
Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes. ~Henry David Thoreau
An idea, like a ghost, according to the common notion of ghosts, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself. ~Charles Dickens
Don't do anything by half. If you love someone, love them. If you hate someone, hate them until it hurts. ~Henry Rollins
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem, but I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. ~E.B. White
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. ~Albert Einstein
Once expanded to the dimensions of a larger idea, [the mind] never returns to its original size. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. ~Bertrand Russell
Anything seems commonplace, once explained. ~Arthur Conan Doyle
Don't go to the doctor with every distemper, nor to the lawyer with every quarrel, nor to the pot for every thirst. ~Benjamin Franklin
Could I write all, the world would turn to stone. ~Caterina Sforza, Italian who was basis for the queen in chess
Do you understand, gentlemen, that all the horror is in just this: that there is no horror! ~Aleksandr Kuprin
People who are "on" asll the time usually make me sad. You just think, my gosh, sedate this guy or hit him with a brick. ~Bill Murray
I'm not afraid to fail. I'm afraid to be mediocre. ~Junior Seau
Here's one thing I never say anymore: "These people can't be that stupid, can they?" ~George Vecsey
Change your thoughts and you change your world. ~Dr. Norman Vincent Peale
There is no man who is not, at each moment, what he has been and what he will be. ~Oscar Wilde
He who fears all snares falls into none. ~Publius Syrus
Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. ~Buddha
Everything important has been said before. ~Alfred North Whitehead
When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it; this is knowledge. ~Confucius
The final good and the supreme duty of the wise person is to resist appearance. ~Cicero
Love comes in at the eye. ~William Butler Yeats
Love is a dirty trick played on us to achieve the continuation of the species. ~W. Somerset Maugham
Practice charity without holding in mind any conception about charity, for charity after all is just a word. ~Diamond Sutra
Even though I am not religious, the amazement and wonder I have about the human mind is closer to religious awe than dispassionate analysis. ~Bill Gates
Thinking is easy, acting difficult, and, to put one's thoughts into action, the most difficult thing in the world. ~Johann Wolfgang van Goethe
Magic lives in curves not angles. ~Mason Cooley
It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question. ~Eugene Ionesco
The cure for anything is salt water--sweat, tears, or the sea. Isak Dinesen
When I buy a new book, I read the last page first. That way, in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side. ~Harry Burns
Danger and delight grow on one stalk. ~English proverb
After the game, the king and pawn go into the same box. ~Italian proverb
Oh, for a life of sensations rather than thoughts ~John Keats
Things forbidden have a secret charm. ~Tacitus
You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury
The world I create in writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. ~Gloria Anzaldua
Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark places where it leads. ~Erica Jong
We write to taste life twice, in mthe moment and in retrospection. ~Anais Nin
In a way there's only a fine shade of difference between the healthy and the deranged. ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
For broad understanding and deep feeling, you need pain and suffering. ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams. ~William Shakespeare, "Hamlet"
Reality and character, my dear sir, are quite important matters, and sometimes they undermine the staunchest plans! ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Three possibilities for her. Throw herself into the canal; wind up in the madhouse, or...at long last, plunge into depravity headlong, stupefying the mind and petrifying the heart. ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
A good artist learns that what gets you into trouble in high school is worth paying attention to. ~Alix Olson
Intelligence is like four-wheel drive--it only enables you to get stuck in more remote places. ~Garrison Keilor
The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him, and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself, too. ~Samuel Butler
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but his inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. ~Reinhold Niebuhr
Ah, but a man's reach/Should exceed his grasp,/Or what's a heaven for? ~Robert Browning
Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes. ~Oscar Wilde
Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom comes in not exceeding the limit. ~Elbert Hubbard
No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world. ~Dead Poets Society
"You must want to die," she had said once, and maybe that was true. Maybe I would rather be dead than to turn into the kind of grown-up people I knew. What was so hot about living anyway if people think you're a disturbing influence just because you still think about God and Death and the Universe and Love. ~Paul Zindel, The Pigman
Thank Heaven! I am going tomorrow where I shall find a man who has not one agreeable quality, who has neither manners nor sense to recommend him. Stupid men are the only ones worth knowing, after all. ~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds. --We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb. ~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil, a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome. ~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion and sometimes an indirect boast. ~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Well, he certainly is very agreeable, and I give you leave to like him. You have liked many a stupider person. ~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
A pessimist is a well-informed optimist. ~Mark Twain
"Kitty has no discretion in her coughs," said her father; "she times them ill." "I do not cough for my own amusement," replied Kitty fretfully. ~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Tolerance simply means pretending not to know that everyone on the planet but you is a total fuckin' moron. ~Dennis Miller
I've always been laughed at, but I've never been ignored. ~Elsa Maxwell
I am not an eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish. ~Edith Sitwell
Whether women are better than men I cannot say--but I can say they are certainly no worse. ~Golda Meir
I believe in my cosmetics line. There are plenty of charities for the homeless. Isn't it time somebody helped the homely? ~Dolly Parton
In love, as in in pain, in shock, in trouble. ~Germaine Greer
Religion is probably, after sex, the second oldest resource which human beings have available to them for blowing their minds. ~Susan Sontag
Everybody knows that if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something. ~Gertrude Stein
A girl must marry for love, and keep on marrying until she finds it. ~Zsa-Zsa Gabor
It beats me how Freud could say "What do women want?" as if we all must want the same thing. ~Katharine Whitehorn
Reflection must be reserved for solitary hours; whenever she was alone, she gave way to it as the greatest relief; and not a day went by without a solitary walk, in which she might indulge in all the delight of unpleasant reflections. ~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Upon the whole, therefore, she found what had been sometimes found before, that an event to which she had looked forward with impatient desire, did not, in taking place, bring all the satisfaction she had promised herself. ~Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
I read somewhere that 77% of all the mentally ill live in poverty. I'm actually more intrigued by the 23% who are apparently doing quite well for themselves. ~Jerry Garcia
My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son of a bitch. ~Jack Nicholson
I don't just want to live. I want to love first, and live incidentally. ~Zelda Fitzgerald
You can't save your face and your ass at the same time. ~Grafitti
A history of listening to Top 40 radio had left me with a ridiculous and cliched notion of love. I had never entertained the feeling myself but knew that it meant never having to say you're sorry. It was a many-splendored thing. Love was a rose and a hammer. Both blind and all-seeing, it made the world go round. ~David Sedaris, "A Plague of Tics"
"College is the best thing that can ever happen to you," my father used to say, and he was right, for it was there that I discovered drugs, drinking, and smoking. ~David Sedaris, "A Plague of Tics"
The standup comic/on the "Tonight" show/who imitates the Vice President/and cracks up Johnny Carson/and delays sleep for millions/of bedfellows watching between their feet,/slits his wrist the next morning/in the Algonquin's old-fashioned bathroom/the razor in his hand like a toothbrush,/wall as anonymous as a urinal,/the shower curtain his slack rubberman audience,/and then the slash/as simple as opening a letter/and the warm blood breaking out like a rose/upon the bathtub with its claw and ball feet. ~Anne Sexton, "Red Riding Hood"
One thing is certain in life. Just when things are going well, soon afterward they are certain to go wrong. It's just the way things are meant to be. ~Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One
I do not need a man. I am devoted to masturbation. I think it's probably one of the most pleasurable experiences in life. ~Gloria Stuart
Well-behaved women rarely make history. ~Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
It's not true that life is one damn thing after another--it's one damn thing over and over. ~Edna St. Vincent Millay
In this world are very few things made from logic alone. It is illogical for man to be too logical. Some things we must just let stand. The mystery is more important than any possible explanation. The searcher after truth must search with humanity. Ruthless logic is the sign of a limited mind. The truth can only add to the sum of what you know, while a harmless mystery left unexplored often adds to the meaning of life. When a truth is not so important, it is better left as a mystery. ~Bryce Courtenay, The Power of One
Don't dwell on reality; it will only keep you from greatness. ~Randall McBride Jr.
My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions who hate you for what you are and you'd likely turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the 200 political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks. ~David Sedaris, "Something for Everyone"
When you know you are dying, self-deceptions fly from your bedside like embers off a bonfire. ~Darin Strauss, Chang and Eng
Sometimes one learns too early, as I did, what the world is capable of. ~Darin Strauss, Chang and Eng
Passion and platonic friendliness, often contrary siblings, frequently wear similar faces to hide the great distance between them. ~Darin Strauss, Chang and Eng
Exuberance is beauty. ~William Blake
Love--and all its complicated ramifications, Draeger believed--actually does conquer all; Love--or the Fear of Not Having It, or the worry about Not Having Enough of It, or the Terror of Losing it--certainly does conquer all. ~Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
Women of the world are cursed. I mean, is it fair? It's happened to us twice in one century. First it's Twiggy, and now it's Kate Moss. We, from birth onward, are held up against impossible odds of imagery. The guys think they deserve these gorgeous, thin creatures, and the rest of us are judged against that. ~Janeane Garafalo
I can't think of anything worse, really, than to try to live up to someone else's expectations of what you should be. You don't make art by consensus. ~Tracy Chapman
Women's place is in the house, and that's where she should go just as soon as she leaves the office. ~Sheila Copps
Moderation may be the key to success, but it's no fun. ~Enders Groff
Who ever walked behind anyone to freedom? If we can't go hand in hand, I don't want to go. ~Hazel Scott
I've learned one hell of a lot about men in my lifetime. They're all right to take to bed, but you sure better never let them get a stranglehold on you. ~Blaze Starr
To say something nice about themselves, this is the hardest thing in the world for people to do. They'd rather take their clothes off. Nancy Friday
God made man and then said: "I can do better than that," and made woman. ~Adela Rogers St. Johns
I am just too much. ~Bette Davis
Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age. ~Gloria Steinem
Eventually it comes to you: The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely. ~Lorraine Hansberry
If you have intercourse you run the risk of dying and the ramifications of death are final. ~Cyndi Lauper
If I'm not always happy that doesn't mean I'm doing something wrong. It means I am doing something real. ~Laurie Seligman
You, and in fact quite a lot of your generation, have in some way been exiled from that particular sanctuary. It's become almost impossible for someone to "go mad" in the classical sense. At one time people conveniently "went mad" and were never heard from again. Like a character in a romantic novel. But now you are too hip to yourself on a psychological level. You all are too intimate with too many of the symptoms of insanity to be caught completely off your guard. ~Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
In the first reawakening chaos a quick glance about at the morning proved as insufficent as it had the night before. For once again I was able to establish the where but not the when. Certain facts were apparent: dark; cold; thundering boots; quilts; pillow; light under the door--the materials of reality--but I could not pin these materials down in time. And the raw materials of reality without that glue of time are materials adrift and reality is as meaningless as the balsa parts of a model airplane scattered to the wind... ~Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
A cigar is just a cigar, but a good woman is a fuck. ~Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
Swollen heart. This is an insidious malady chiefly common in that mythical organ that pumps life through the veins of the ego: care, coronary care, complicated by galloping fear. The go-away-closer disease. Starving for contact and calling it poison when it is offered. We learn young to be leery of contact: Never open up, we learn...you want somebody running their dirty old fingers over your soul's privates? Never accept candy from strangers or from friends. Sneak off a sack of gumdrops when nobody's looking if you can, but don't accept, never accept...you want somebody taking advantage? And above all, never care, never never never care. Because it is caring that lulls you into letting down your guard and leaving up your shades...you want some fink knowing what you are really like down inside? ~Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
The past is funny, Viv; it never seems to let things lie, finished. It never seems to stay in place as it should. ~Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
None of the other kids, with their level-headed feet-on-the-ground daddies--even those whose daddies had been killed in accidents--had to take such risks to get along, because none of them had fanatics for fathers. ~Ken Kesey, Sometimes a Great Notion
Men are jerks. Women are psychotic. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
If there is a God, He sure hates people. That's all I can say. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
Sigmund Freud said he didn't know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. ~Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake
It's not pretty being easy. ~bumper sticker
I try to make everyone's day a little more surreal. ~Calvin and Hobbes
My brain is trying to kill me. ~Calvin and Hobbes
Christianity is for losers. ~Ted Turner
I'm trying to refrain from making any big millenial statements. I just want to make a dumb party album to have sex to. ~Beck
Fraud makes the world go round. ~John Updike, Rabbit, Run
"You know, you're a pig really." "Oh now baby," he says, and puts his arm around the substance of her waist, I think I'm sort of neat." ~John Updike, Rabbit, Run
If you're telling me I'm not mature, that's one thing I don't cry over since as far as I can make out it's the same thing as being dead. ~John Updike, Rabbit, Run
The devil never has an unemployment problem! ~Office marquee
There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Sensible Thing"
I hope I'll never get ambitious enough to try anything. ~Zelda Fitzgerald
Both of us are very splashy, vivid pictures, those kind with the details left out, but I know our colors will blend, and I think we'll look very well hanging beside each other in the gallery of life. ~Zelda Fitzgerald
I want to be in New York where there's enough mischief for everybody. ~Zelda Fitzgerald
I am tired of rummaging my head to understand a situation that would be difficult enough if I were completely lucid. ~Zelda Fitzgerald
A writer's temperament is continually making him do things he can never repair. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
We have two or three great moving experiences in our lives--experiences so great and moving that it doesn't seem at the time that anyone else has been so caught up and pounded and dazzled and astonished and beaten and broken and rescued and illuminated and rewarded and humbled in just that way ever before. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald, "One Hundred False Starts"
I wish you read books (you know those things that look like blocks but come apart on one side)... ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
So they were desperately in love and being desperately in love involves a desperate existence. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald
If you're not a feminist, you're a masochist. ~Gloria Steinem
Instant gratification takes too long. ~Carrie Fisher
Don't cook. Don't clean. No man will ever make love to a woman because she waxed the linoleum--"My God, the floor's immaculate. Lie down, you hot bitch." ~Joan Rivers
Cotton candy--is there sugar in that? ~Paul Shaffer
Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense. ~Gertrude Stein
Journalism is the ability to meet the challenge of filling space. ~Rebecca West
Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry. ~Gloria Steinem
I don't want to make money. I just want to be wonderful. ~Marilyn Monroe
Remember, lust makes you stupid. ~Nicolle Hollander
A hard man is good to find. ~Mae West
I was really happy when they started naming hurricanes after men. It made national disasters sound even more like my emotional life. "Brian Wrecks All" could be a headline from my journal. ~Regina Barreca
Our beauties are not ours. ~Ben Johnson
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,/To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! ~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"
Death closes all: but something ere the end,/Some work of noble note, may yet be done. ~Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "Ulysses"
I'm basically a shut-in. I don't want to talk to anybody. ~Nathan Lane
I was cleaning it, Niles. It's electric. If I was going to end my life, I'd choose something quicker than broiling. ~Frasier, Frasier
But words are words. I never yet did hear/That the bruised heart was pieced through the ear. ~William Shakespeare, "Othello"
Eventually, it will occur to you that every interesting thing that's happened in your life actually happened to someone around you, and you just watched. ~The Onion
It's hard to be depressed when you're looking at a giant mitten. ~Shirley, Ed
Fuck solids. ~Graffiti, Springfield, MA bus station
Have you tried thinking like a shower? ~Chris Stevens
We can believe what we choose. We are answerable for what we choose to believe. ~Cardinal Newman
It is always easier to believe than to deny. Our minds are naturally affirmative. ~John Burroughs, The Light of Day
The thought of suicide is a great source of comfort: with it a calm passage is to be made across many a bad night. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
If they can put a man on the moon why can't they put one in me? ~Flash Rosenberg
A friend of mine confused her Valium with her birth control pills--she had 14 kids but she didn't give a shit. ~Joan Rivers
Today is the first day of the wreck of your life. ~Becky Burke
Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse. ~Lily Tomlin
How many of you have ever started dating someone because you were too lazy to commit suicide? ~Judy Tenuta
To err is human but it feels divine. ~Mae West
It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on. ~Marilyn Monroe
Artists aren't like you. We go through a creative process that's demented and crazy. There's a lot of soul-searching and turning ourselves inside-out and all kinds of gross stuff that ends up on Behind the Music. ~Courtney Love
Time and space are weird, man. ~Steven Wright
Nothing feels worse than other people's good times. ~John Updike, Rabbit Redux
Accent the ugly until it becomes gorgeous. ~John Updike, Rabbit Redux
So much love, too much love, it is our madness, it is rotting us out, exploding us like dandelion polls. ~John Updike, Rabbit Redux
Days, pale slices between nights, they blend, not exactly alike, transparencies so lightly tinted that only stacked all together do they darken to a fatal shade. ~John Updike, Rabbit Redux
How can the planet keep turning and turning and not get so bored it explodes? ~John Updike, Rabbit Redux
I think we're all in our private traps. Clamped in them, and none of us can ever get out. ~Psycho
Y'know, Katie, it's never good when you're being pursued by giant icicles. ~Bob Costas
A hundred times I wanted to kill myself, but always I loved life more. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts; is anything more stupid than choosing to carry a burden that really one wants to cast on the ground? to hold existence in horror, and yet cling to it? to fondle the serpent which devours us till it has eaten out our heart? ~Voltaire, Candide
"What's optimism?" said Cacambo. "Alas," said Candide, "it is mania for saying things are well when one is in hell." ~Voltaire, Candide
Two things, almost incompatible, are united in me in a manner which I am unable to understand: a very ardent temperament, lively and tumultuous passions, and, at the same time, slowly developed and confused ideas, which never present themselves until it is too late. One might say that my heart and my mind do not belong to the same person. ~Jean-Jacques Rosseau, Confessions
I loved too sincerely, too completely, I venture to say, to be able to be happy easily. ~Jean-Jacques Rosseau, Confessions
One of your biggest problems is your inability to take life as it comes. Another is your ongoing inability to take your own life. ~The Onion
Has any one supposed it lucky to be born?/I hasten to inform him or her it is just as lucky to die, and I know it. ~Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
Many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death. ~John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"
That's one of the greatest curses ever inflicted on the human race, memory. ~Citizen Kane
I am not made like any of those I have seen. I venture to believe that I am not made like any of those who are in existence. If I am not better, at least I am different. Whether Nature has acted rightly or wrongly in destorying the mould in which she cast me can only be decided after I have been read. ~Jean-Jacques Rosseau, Confessions
Ivan Ilyich's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible. ~Leo Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"
Just as women's bodies are softer than men's, so their understanding is sharper. ~Christine de Pisan
Women are the real architects of society. ~Harriet Beecher Stowe
I'm the girl who lost her reputation and never missed it. ~Mae West
Contentment is the result of a limited imagination. ~Carolyn Wells
When you get to the end of your rope--tie a knot in it and hang on. ~Eleanor Roosevelt
Every time we liberate a woman, we liberate a man. ~Margaret Mead
Many of the artifacts of my house had become potential devices for my own destruction: the attic rafters (and an outside maple or two) a means to hang myself, the garage a place to inhale carbon monoxide, the bathtub a vessel to receive the flow from my opened arteries. The kitchen knives in their drawers had but one purpose for me. ~William Styron
Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same. ~Leo Tolstoy, "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"
Every time women agitate it is against an oppresiveness that is euphemized as "patriarchy" but is really just men. ~Elizabeth Wurtzel
I've often thought that when something is hard for you, whether it's going to law school or anything else that challenges you, that's probably what you should do. ~Hillary Rodham Clinton
I didn't and don't want to be a "feminine" version or a diluted version or a special version or a subsidary version or an ancillary version or an adapted version of the heroes I admire. I want to be the heroes themselves. ~Joanna Russ
What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or to not have a mind. How true that is. ~Dan Quayle
I am a sick man...I am a spiteful man. I am a most unpleasant man. ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
For example, I'm terribly proud. I'm as mistrustful and as sensitive as a hunchback or a dwarf; but, in truth, I've experienced some moments when if someone had slapped my face, I might even have been grateful for it. I'm being serious. I probably would have been able to derive a peculiar sort of pleasure from it--the pleasure of despair, naturally, but the most intense pleasures occur in despair, especially when you're very acutely aware of the hopelessness of your own predicament. ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
I've always considered myself smarter than everyone around me, and sometimes, believe me, I've been ashamed of it. At the least, all my life I've looked away and never could look people straight in the eye. ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
Can a man possessing conciousness ever really respect himself? ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
Perhaps a normal man is supposed to be stupid--how do we know? Perhaps it's even very beautiful. ~Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied/Who told me time would ease me of my pain! ~Edna St. Vincent Millay
Death devours all lovely things. ~Edna St. Vincent Millay
Oh, do not weep these tears saltier than the flung spray!--/Weepers are the sea's brides.../I mean this the drowning way. ~Edna St. Vincent Millay
The truth is that I don't like people much. And they don't much like me. ~A Beautiful Mind
It is unlikely that you can recall anyone telling you not to eat human flesh. ~My sociology textbook
You ever talk to a logical lunatic before? They're much worse than a plain lunatic. ~Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
Life breaks us. And when we heal, we're stronger in the broken parts. ~Ernest Hemingway
Isn't it comforting to know that being miserable is still better than being an idiot? ~Claire, Six Feet Under
Everyone is too stupid. ~Enid, Ghost World
Maybe I don't want to meet someone who shares my interests. I hate my interests. ~Seymour, Ghost World
I can't relate to 99% of humanity. ~Seymour, Ghost World
I think only stupid people have good relationships. ~Enid, Ghost World
I hate it when politicians say "The American people are not stupid." Since fucking when? ~Janeane Garafalo
I despise in others my own characteristics. ~Janeane Garafalo
Your whole life is one big Cliff's Notes missing a page, isn't it? ~Dennis Miller
Just so you know, fate doesn't necessarily have something special in store for you just because nothing particularly notable has happened to you yet. ~The Onion
After all is said and done, no one will have said or done anything involving you in any way. ~The Onion
Nature does not demand that we be perfect. It requires only that we grow. ~Josh Liebman
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth. ~Albert Einstein
Live to the point of tears. ~Albert Camus
If you're going through Hell, keep going. ~Winston Churchill
It is never to let to be what you might have been. ~George Eliot
Days pass and months pass and years pass and you light the holy candle of yourself by the glimmer of someone else, and just when you think you're burned out on her, you realize that she's the single thing that raises you above yourself. ~Michael Paterniti, Driving Mr. Albert
In our national parlance, what's usually meant by the word "maverick" is someone who skirts the edge of sanity--or is so insane as to appear sane--who then does something absolutely insane and yet, after the passage of time, and especially if the maverick's creation yields a profit of any kind, is deemed less and less insane until the maverick worms his or her way into the fibers of history. Then generations grow to envy the ingenuity and courage of the maverick while glossing over the maverick's genetic kookiness. On such shoulders, a country rises. ~Michael Paterniti, Driving Mr. Albert
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. ~Henry David Thoreau
What an absurd notion that women have not intellectual and moral faculties sufficent for anything else but domestic concerns! ~Susan B. Anthony
To me Art (poetry) is a continuous and continuing process and that when a man fails to write good poetry he fails to live fully or well. ~Charles Bukowski
I have seen too many men wilt and go silly under a little light, and then they continue to write and get published, turning out pure crap under a name that has become a bad habit. The next poem is all that counts. You can't stand on past poems. ~Charles Bukowski
Dog is much admired by Man because he believes in the hand which feeds him. A perfect set-up. For 13 cents a day you've got a hired killer who thinks you are god. A dog can't tell a Nazi from a Republican from a Commie from a Democrat and, many times, neither can I. ~Charles Bukowski
Americans are colossally bored. ~Albert Einstein
Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. ~Albert Einstein
You seem to have a psychotic obsession with me. I like that in a woman. ~Jay Sherman
They have bellybuttons, but no genitalia. So it's important to teach children that there is a life cycle, but your genitals are no part of it. ~Ed Robertson, on Cabbage Patch Kids
All the Democrats I've talked to know exactly what they stand for: not being Republicans. ~The Onion
I've seen the end of the universe, and it's in the United States. And it happens to be in Houston, Texas. I know--I was shocked too. ~Lewis Black
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