It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down, wrote this song, and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people.

A great deal has been written in recent years about the purported lack of motivation in the children of the Negro ghettos. Little in my experience supports this, yet the phrase has been repeated endlessly, and the blame in almost all cases is placed somewhere outside the classroom.

Jonathan Kozol

There is always room for those who can be relied upon to delivery the goods when they say they will.

Napoleon Hill

?Kalganov ran back into the front hall, sat down in a corner, bent his head, covered his face with his hands, and began to cry. He sat like that and cried for a long time--cried as though he were still a little boy and not a man of twenty... 'What are these people, what sort of people can there be after this!' he kept exclaiming incoherently, in bitter dejection, almost in despair. At that moment he did not even want to live in the world. 'Is it worth it, is it worth it!' the grieved young man kept exclaiming.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The fantastical idea of virtue and the public good being a sufficient security to the state against the commission of crimes...was never mine. It is only the sanguinary hue of our penal laws which I meant to object to. Punishments I know are necessary, and I would provide them strict and inflexible, but proportioned to the crime. Death might be inflicted for murder and perhaps for treason, [but I] would take out of the description of treason all crimes which are not such in their nature. Rape, buggery, etc., punish by castration. All other crimes by working on high roads, rivers, gallies, etc., a certain time proportioned to the offence... Laws thus proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with. Let mercy be the character of the lawgiver, but let the judge be a mere machine. The mercies of the law will be dispensed equally and impartially to every description of men; those of the judge or of the executive power will be the eccentric impulses of whimsical, capricious designing man.

Thomas Jefferson

Impartial - unable to perceive any promise of personal advantage from espousing either side of a controversy.

Ambrose Bierce

Do not wait for an opportunity to be all that you want to be.

Wallace D. Wattles

Happiness doesn't come from doing what we like to do but from liking what we have to do.

Wilferd A. Peterson

Life, weddings, relationships, road trips, gardening, making out, haircuts: few of the fun things in life always go as expected.

Ariel Meadow Stallings

This is the true joy in life - being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.

George Bernard Shaw

It can have an enormous effect because big budget movies can have big budget perks, and small budget movies have no perks, but what is the driving force, of course, is the script, and your part in it.

Morgan Freeman

One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is when we see its separate forms jumbled together.

Johann von Goethe

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.

Susan Ertz