Don't be a spectator, don't let life pass you by.

Parents, it seems, have an almost Olympian persistence when it comes to suggesting more secure and lucrative lines of work for their children who have the notion that writing is an actual profession. I say this from experience.

Susan Orlean

For as long as the power of America's diversity is diminished by acts of discrimination and violence against people just because they are black, Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, Muslim or gay, we still must overcome.

Ron Kind

I believe one would write better if the climate were bad. If there were a lot of wind and storms for example...

Aldous Huxley

Desire is a powerful force that can be used to make things happen.

Marcia Wieder

There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves.

Jose Rizal

Liars are always ready to take oaths.

Vittorio Alfieri

Brilliantly lit from stem to stern, she looked like a sagging birthday cake.

Walter Lord

All life is an experiment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not every religion has to have St. Augustine's attitude to sex. Why even in our culture marriages are celebrated in a church, everyone present knows what is going to happen that night, but that doesn't prevent it being a religious ceremony.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

I've always been shocked and waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop that a girl would ever talk to me, let alone want to marry me. They always seem to hold the power to me, and from my mother to my wife to my daughter, every time I try to really figure them out, and think I've got them pegged, I pay for it.

Andrew Stanton

Hominids typically haven't so much adapted to change, as they have accommodated to it.

Ian Tattersall

Should a nation which attacks and occupies foreign territory in the face of United Nations disapproval be allowed to impose conditions on its own withdrawal?

Dwight D Eisenhower