I became famous so quickly and so young - it was daunting. I was immature and I used to say some really stupid things in interviews. I never smiled on stage so I looked really serious, but it was because I hated my teeth and was incredibly nervous.

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

Paul Theroux

Behind the hieroglyphic streets there would either be a transcendent meaning, or only the earth.

Thomas Pynchon

The truth is that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.

Helen Hayes

And so taking the long way home through the market I slow my pace down. It doesn't come naturally. My legs are programmed to trot briskly and my arms to pump up and down like pistons, but I force myself to stroll past the stalls and pavement cafes. To enjoy just being somewhere, rather than rushing from somewhere, to somewhere. Inhaling deep lungfuls of air, instead of my usual shallow breaths. I take a moment to just stop and look around me. And smile to myself.For the first time in a long time, I can, quite literally, smell the coffee.

Alexandra Potter

Gay marriage has jumped out of the closet on to the front page. Everyone from the president of the U.S. to retired four-star general Colin Powell is embracing the issue, now supported by most Americans. Still, a few people, like former First Lady Laura Bush appear to be conflicted.

Kitty Kelley

Biologically the species is the accumulation of the experiments of all its successful individuals since the beginning.

H. G. [Herbert George] Wells

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

Socrates

I have maintained a passionate interest in education, which leads me occasionally to make foolish and ill-considered remarks alleging that not everything is well in our schools.

Philip Pullman

Drinking is the soldier's pleasure.

John Dryden

Are you ready to cut off your head and place your foot on it? If so, come; Love awaits you! Love is not grown in a garden, nor sold in the marketplace; whether you are a king or a servant, the price is your head, and nothing less. Yes, the cost of the elixir of love is your head! Do you hesitate? 0 miser, It is cheap at that price!

Abu Hamid AlGhazzali

We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see.

Charles Peguy

Let mental culture go on advancing, let the natural sciences progress in even greater extent and depth, and the human mind widen itself as much as it desires: beyond the elevation and moral culture of Christianity, as it shines forth in the Gospels, it will not go.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe