It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.

Everybody talks about wanting to change things and help and fix, but ultimately all you can do is fix yourself. And that's a lot. Because if you can fix yourself, it has a ripple effect.

Rob Reiner

Part of courage is simple consistency.

Peggy Noonan

I had been a reporter for 15 years when I set out to write my first novel. I knew how to research an article or profile a subject - skills that I assumed would be useless when it came to fiction. It was from my imagination that the characters in my story would emerge.

Amy Waldman

No agent wants to see a book until he or she has decided whether to pursue the relationship.

Sara Paretsky

But with regard to critical occasions, it often happens that all moments seem comfortably remote until the last.

George Eliot

In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless.

Bill Bryson

Man is born unto the trouble as the sparks fly upwards.' In other words suffering is germane to our existence; indeed, how without it, should we be able to 'fly upwards

Andrei Tarkovsky

I've always enjoyed poor health.

Taylor Caldwell

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

Edward R. Murrow

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster.

E. M. Cioran

The country that owns green, that dominates that industry, is going to have the most energy security, national security, economic security, competitive companies, healthy population and, most of all, global respect.

Thomas Friedman

We all need to be mocked from time to time, lest we take ourselves too seriously.

George R.R. Martin