Common sense is that layer of prejudices which we acquire before we are sixteen.

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

Alice Walker

Critics, you have been so kind, I would not have you think me blind To all the wisdom that you preach; Yet before I strictlier run In straiter lines of chiselled speech, Give me one more hour, just one Hour to hunt the fairy gleam That flutters through this childish dream.

Alfred Noyes

I know I have this level of celebrity, of fame, international, national, whatever you want to call it, but it's a pretty surreal thing to think sometimes that you're in the middle of another famous person's life and you think to yourself, 'How the hell did I get famous? What is this some weird club that we're in?'

Kevin Costner

All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly not constructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.

Terry Eagleton

American society is a sort of flat, fresh-water pond which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.

Henry Adams

Forget being a bad failure, use Cosmic Ordering and be good at success.

Stephen Richards

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.

Stephen King

In depression...faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no rememdy will come, not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

William Styron, from 'Darkness V

If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the bloodstained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

Thomas Jefferson

When a thought is too weak to be expressed simply, it should be rejected.

Marquis De Vauvenargues

With respect to the northeastern boundary of the United States, no official correspondence between this Government and that of Great Britain has passed since that communicated to Congress toward the close of their last session.

Martin Van Buren

If my career detour from special education to singing has done one thing, it has afforded me the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others.

Clay Aiken