An author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience, but the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex, and attempts to define the process are at best guesses from evidence that is inadequate and ambiguous.

The longer we live the more we think and the higher the value we put on friendship and tenderness towards parents and friends.

Samuel Johnson

A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wanted to write and direct movies and not be forced to adapt them from a bestselling book.

Francis Ford Coppola

If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Disability is a matter of perception. If you can do just one thing well, you're needed by someone.

Martina Navratilova

The scientific argument advanced for intelligent design at the Dover trial, those arguments collapsed, scientifically and intellectually.

Kenneth R. Miller

I think happiness is what makes you pretty. Period. Happy people are beautiful. They become like a mirror and they reflect that happiness.

Drew Barrymore

The Universe is the creation of the mind. Universe exists inside the mind as the flower exists inside the seed.

Amit Ray

The needs of babies and toddlers were constant and drained the life out my sense of self and my family's relationship with each other.

Mika Brzezinski

For almost seventy years the life insurance industry has been a smug sacred cow feeding the public a steady line of sacred bull.

Ralph Nader

In a world awash in debt, power shifts to creditors.

Fareed Zakaria

If the people have no bread, let them eat cake.

Marie Antoinette