I couldn't help but say to Mr. Gorbachev just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. We'd find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth together.

Now everything changed. My childhood world was breaking apart around me. My parents eyed me with a certain embarrassment. My sisters had become strangers to me. A disenchantment falsified and blunted my usual feelings and joys: the garden lacked fragrance, the woods held no attraction for me, the world stood around me like a clearance sale of last year's secondhand goods, insipid, all its charm gone. Books were so much paper, music a grating noise. That is the way leaves fall around a tree in autumn, a tree unaware of the rain running down its sides, of the sun or the frost, and of life gradually retreating inward. The tree does not die. It waits.

Hermann Hesse, Demian, 1918

A lot of the things that we've been able to do in the last several years were Democratic ideas, including the structure for this new director of national intelligence.

Jane Harman

Well, I've been reading a lot about the fifty years since the Second World War, about Western foreign policy and all that. I try not to let it get to me, but sometimes I just think that there's no hope.

Thom Yorke

I don't cook. I don't know anything about food. I've never reviewed a restaurant.

Calvin Trillin

Failure is not fatal victory is not success.

Tony Richardson

I do think sometimes there's danger in guest appearance mania. I've seen too many examples that sound cool on paper, like 'Oh, get that guy to sing the hook on that guy's song,' and then that's all it is. It's a cool idea that sounds good on paper.

Ezra Koenig

Leadership has to do with direction. Management has to do with the speed, coordination and logistics in going in that direction. The WORKERS are chopping their way through the jungle. The MANAGERS are coordinating, making sure the tools are sharp, etc. The LEADERS climb a tree and shout Wrong jungle!! The MANAGERS shout back Be quiet! We're making progress!

Source Unknown

The motion picture is like a picture of a lady in a half-piece bathing suit. If she wore a few more clothes, you might be intrigued. If she wore no clothes at all, you might be shocked. But the way it is, you are occupied with noticing that her knees are too bony and that her toenails are too large. The modern film tries too hard to be real. Its techniques of illusion are so perfect that it requires no contribution from the audience but a mouthful of popcorn.

Raymond Chandler

All say, How hard it is that we have to die -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.

Mark Twain

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

Oscar Wilde

Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.

Plato

Silences make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying but the never needing to say is what counts.

Margaret Lee Runbeck