Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.

Old age is a shipwreck.

Charles de Gaulle

Well, you got to remember, bin Laden killed 3,000 Americans and, in some ways, he and his ideology killed tens of thousands of his fellow Muslims, including Pakistanis. I understand that that was provocative and complicated for Pakistan, but only if you accept the idea that he was an acceptable member of Pakistani society.

Sebastian Junger

Daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tends to balance out.

Raoul Vaneigem

They are few in the midst of an overwhelming mass of brute force, and their submission is wisdom but for a nation like England to submit to be robbed by any invader who chooses to visit her shores seemed to me to be nonsense.

George Combe

A writer and nothing else; a man alone in a room with the English language, trying to get human feelings right.

John K. Hutchens

An epigram is a flashlight of a truth; a witticism, truth laughing at itself.

Minna Antrim

My books are water; those of great geniuses are wine everybody drinks water

Mark Twain

I think this is when most people give up on their stories. They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought. They can't see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger. They take it out on their spouses, and they go looking for an easier story.

Donald Miller

The issue of civil rights was too much for the establishment to handle. One of the chapters of history that's least studied by historians is the 300 to 500 riots in the U.S. between 1965 and 1970.

Tom Hayden

If you're out, and starving, and need a bite to eat, then you need fast food.

Nicholas Hoult

If one synchronised swimmer drowns, do all the rest have to drown too?

Steven Wright

We talk of our mastery of nature, which sounds very grand but the fact is we respectfully adapt ourselves, first, to her ways.

Clarence Day