Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission.

Rock and roll music - the music of freedom frightens people and unleashes all manner of conservative defense mechanisms.

Salman Rushdie

What is true of every member of the society, individually, is true of them all collectively; since the rights of the whole can be no more than the sum of the rights of the individuals.

Thomas Jefferson

Where there is much light, the shadow is deep.

Johann von Goethe

I never gave up on country music because I knew what I was doing was not that bad.

Willie Nelson

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Sonia Sotomayor

Close don't count in baseball. Close only counts in horseshoes and grenades.

Frank Robinson, attributed

A lot of times you get credit for stuff in your movies you didn't intend to be there.

Spike Lee

A ship's engine far away on the water expands the summer-night horizon. Both joy and sorrow swell in the dew's magnifying glass. Without really knowing, we divine; our life has a sister ship, following quietly another route. While the sun blazes behind the islands.

Tomas Transtromer

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

George S. Patton

If you take away ideology, you are left with a case by case ethics which in practice ends up as me first, me only, and in rampant greed.

Richard A. Nelson

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of all money?

Ayn Rand

She got her looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon.

Groucho Marx