When I decided to launch my first knitwear line, it was because I saw a void in the basics category. The editors were always looking for cool, fashion-forward tees and sweaters. So that's where I started.

And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them, now in the Elven-tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.

J.R.R. Tolkien

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it.

Joseph Conrad

Footnote: In 1998, a woman in Saline, Michigan received a patent for a Decorative Penile Wrap...The patent included three pages of drawings, including a penis wearing a ghost outfit, another in the robes of the Grim Reaper, and one dressed up to look like a snowman.

Mary Roach

In a culture of hyper-consumption the advertising industry has brainwashed many people into believing they can raise their status just by driving a particular brand of whatever it is they are pushing at you.

Stephen Richards

When my grandfather died, I started adopting some of his accents, to sort of remind myself of him. A homage. He was a war hero, and he was really great with his hands.

Gavin DeGraw

No one is fit to judge a book until he has rounded Cape Horn in a sailing vessel, until he has bumped into two or three icebergs, until he has been lost in the sands of the desert, until he has spent a few years in the House of the Dead.

Van Wyck Brooks, From a Writer's

Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting she is never plain. She is a visitor who leaves behind the gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.

Christopher Morley

When you retire, it's a place in life, a part of the journey. You just don't quit work you develop an attitude where you can do what you please.

Tom T. Hall

In philosophy class I think we finally decided that 'good' is an infinitely recursive term - it can't be defined except in terms of itself. Good is good because it's better than bad, though why it's better to be good than bad depends on how you define good, and on and on.

Orson Scott Card

Very young children eat their books, literally devouring their contents. This is one reason for the scarcity of first editions of Alice in Wonderland and other favorites of the nursery.

A. S. W. Rosenbach

I get whatever placidity I have from my father. But my mother taught me how to take it on the chin.

Norma Shearer

What we ask of him is, that he should find out for us more than we can find out for ourselves. He must have the passion of a lover.

Arthur Symons