I was a 16-year-old girl at one point, so of course I wrote poetry.

Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion.

Christina Aguilera

How happy is the blameless vestal's lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Alexander Pope

Science fiction, to me, has not only things that wouldn't happen, but other planets.

Margaret Atwood

The difference between greatness and mediocrity is often how an individual views a mistake...

Nelson Boswell

The problem that we have with a victim mentality is that we forget to see the blessings of the day. Because of this, our spirit is poisoned instead of nourished.

Steve Maraboli

Morality and its victim, the mother - what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?

Emma Goldman

Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.

Homer

I'm conscious of a series of circles working its way through my life. And at this particular moment I have come round to the beginning of my writing cycle. It begins with poetry. There's hardly a day that goes past on which I don't write poetry.

Ben Okri

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

Ambrose Bierce

My advantage as a woman and a human being has been in having a mother who believed strongly in women's education. She was an early undergraduate at Oxford, and her own mother was a doctor.

Antonia Fraser

A person who is trained to consider his actions, to undertake them deliberately, is in so far forth disciplined. Add to this ability a power to endure in an intelligently chosen course in the face of distraction, confusion, and difficulty, and you have the essence of discipline.

John Dewey, Democracy and Educat

All honor to him who shall win the prize. The world has cried for a thousand years. But to him who tries and fails and dies, I give great honor and glory and tears.

Joaquin Miller