Don't quack like a duck, soar like an eagle.

One is rated by others as he rates himself.

Proverb

What's so exciting and terrifying about the writing process is that it really is an act of exploration and discovery. With all of us, not just writers, there is a sort of knowledge of the other. We have a lot more in common than we realize, and I think writing is really a sustained act of empathy.http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0300/dubus/interview.html

Andre Dubus, from an interview b

Meeting sports athletes that are the best in the world is a thrill to this day.

Phil Knight

Literature is a luxury; fiction is a necessity.

G. K. Chesterton

There are a lot of grotesqueries in politics, not the least of which is the fund-raising side.

Jack Kemp

Logicians may reason about abstractions. But the great mass of men must have images. The strong tendency of the multitude in all ages and nations to idolatry can be explained on no other principle.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

Be an opener of doors for such as come after thee.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

What's the difference between the music of my generation and today s. Our songs were about Love and Romance, today's music is chiefly about sex; which I might add gets a little boring.

David A. Vigilanti

Every situation, properly perceived, becomes an opportunity

Helen Schucman

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. The dark background which death supplies brings out the tender colors of life in all their purity.

George Santayana

Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1891

A diary with no drawings of me in it? Where are the torrid fantasies? The romance covers?

Cassandra Clare