The anticipation and dread he felt at seeing her was also a kind of sensual pleasure, and surrounding it, like an embrace, was a general elation--it might hurt, it was horribly inconvenient, no good might come of it, but he had found out for himself what it was to be in love, and it thrilled him.

I could not sit seriously down to write a serious Romance under any other motive than to save my life

Jane Austen

The agreement or disagreement or its sense with reality constitutes its truth or falsity.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

What I want to do is tell stories about normal people in the American suburbs. I don't write the book where it's a conspiracy reaching the prime minister I don't write the book with the big serial killer who lops off heads. My setting is a very placid pool of suburbia, family life. And within that I can make pretty big splashes.

Harlan Coben

You know, 'The Golden Girls' was a very unusual show to start on. I was young, and it was a show about old people, and it was a very traditional show, but it was also an amazing training ground for a joke-writer. It forced me to learn those skills.

Mitchell Hurwitz

We live in an age of mediocrity.

Lauren Bacall

A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens, some of Zola, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and, in modern drama, Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'

Tony Kushner

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

Winston Churchill

People expect Byzantine, Machiavellian logic from politicians. But the truth is simple. Trial lawyers learn a good rule: 'Don't decide what you don't have to decide.' That's not evasion, it's wisdom.

Mario Cuomo

I realized women and humor were linked very closely.

Craig Ferguson

If you know you are on the right track, if you have this inner knowledge, then nobody can turn you off... no matter what they say.

Barbara McClintock

Anything will give up its secrets if you love it enough. Not only have I found that when I talk to the little flower or to the little peanut they will give up their secrets, but I have found that when I silently commune with people they give up their secrets also - if you love them enough.

George Washington Carver

A pig bought on credit is forever grunting.

Proverb