It was deeply important for me to understand where Mandela came from. Because we know where he was going, and that's a famous story, but who was he? Where did he come from? What was his upbringing?

For the nature of women is closely allied to art

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

I was sort of in denial about doing country for awhile but I sort of grew up and realized who I was, what I wanted to say. I think country music is the best music in the world and I'm glad to be doing a country album. I hope people will love it as much as I loved making it.

Lucy Hale

You can almost see voters nodding their heads at home: The public's faith in politicians and political institutions has been on a steep and dangerous decline for decades, because elected leaders fail to deliver.

Ron Fournier

I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.

Joyce Kilmer

I have to learn that the aim in life is God's, not mine. God is using me from His great personal standpoint, and all He asks of me is that I trust Him, and never say -- Lord, this gives me such heart-ache.... He simply asks me to have implicit faith in Himself and in His goodness.

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For H

she was glad she had been scarred. She said that whoever loved her now would love her true self, and not her pretty face.

Cassandra Clare

Affairs of state tend to drive most presidents toward the center on both foreign and domestic policy, no matter where on the political spectrum they begin, and especially so in the areas of intelligence and law enforcement.

David K. Shipler

One minute you're closer to someone than anyone in the whole world, next minute they need only to say the words 'time apart', 'serious talk' or 'maybe you...' and you're never going to see them again and will have to spend the next six months having imaginary conversations in which they beg to come back, and bursting into tears at the sight of their toothbrush.

Helen Fielding

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.

Stephen Jay Gould

Don't kid yourself. President Obama's decision to withdraw 33,000 troops from Afghanistan before he stands for reelection is not driven by the United States' 'position of strength' in the war zone as much as it is by grim economic and political realities at home.

Ron Fournier

A man would prefer to come home to an unmade bed and a happy woman than to a neatly made bed and an angry woman.

Marlene Dietrich

My ideal relaxation is working on upholstry. I spend hours in junk shops buying furniture. I do all the upholstery work myself, and it's like therapy.

Pamela Anderson