The other day I bumped into Santa Claus. A good bump it was, too! I ought to have been arrested, for there is no open season on Santa Claus. But sometimes a first class collision is an exciting thing. It will knock the wind out of you, and it may knock an idea into your head. True, this Santa Claus did not have the white cotton whiskers or a red coat, but she was the real thing all right! Santa Claus in the flesh and plenty of it. A lady who looked like an animated Christmas tree with packages dangling from very limb and I bumped and spilled. As I was trying to pick up the packages she gasped out, Oh, I hate Christmas anyhow! It turns everything upside down. To which I said, That is just what it was made for. This lofty sentiment did not stop her dirty looks at all. But it is the big thing about Christmas.

I still enjoy my life, and I feel like I've achieved enough things that if I never did anything again, I'd feel confident that I'd still have made my mark in some way. But maybe the self-loathing bit is the element that makes you strive for more. Makes you strive to be better.

David Walliams

Dates with actors, finally, just seemed to me evenings of shop talk. I got sick of it after a hile. So the more famous I became, the more I narrowed down my choices.

Hedy Lamarr

Temptations, when we first meet them, are like a lion that roared at Samson; but if we overcome them, the next time we see them we shall find a nest of honey within them.

John Bunyan

Kinkade's paintings are worthless schmaltz, and the lamestream media that love him are wrong. However, I'd love to see a museum mount a small show of Kinkade's work. I would like the art world and the wider world to argue about him in public, out in the open.

Jerry Saltz

Morale is the state of mind. It is steadfastness and courage and hope. It is confidence and zeal and loyalty. It is elan, esprit de corps and determination.

General George Catlett Marshall

I loved fantasy, but I particularly loved the stories in which somebody got out of where they were and into somewhere better - as in the 'Chronicles Of Narnia,' 'The Wizard Of Oz,' 'The Phantom Tollbooth,' the 'Dungeons &amp Dragons' cartoon on Saturday morning in the '80s.

Lev Grossman

It takes more than just a good looking body. You've got to have the heart and soul to go with it.

Lee Haney

There are people, also, who cannot believe that beauty and gaiety are a part of goodness. When we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen.

Edith Sitwell

Dad bought me a toy drum one Christmas, and I eventually destroyed it. I wanted a real drum and he bought me a snare drum. Dad continued to buy me one drum after the other.

Keith Thibodeaux

It may be a cliche, but it's true - the build-up to Christmas is so much more pleasurable than the actual day itself.

Julie Burchill

Whatever has overstepped its due bounds is always in a state of instability.

Seneca (Seneca the Elder)

The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.

Walter Bagehot