Fear always springsfrom ignorance.

I thought how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. It is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes, barrens, wilds. It still dwarfs, terrifies, crushes. The rivers still roar, the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter. Man is an affair of cities. His gardens, orchards and fields are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. But the giant is there, nevertheless.

Wallace Stevens, Letters

Marriage accustomed one to the good things, so one came to take them for granted, but magnified the bad things, so they came to feel as painful as a grain in one's eye. An open window, a forgotten quart of milk, a TV set left blaring, socks on the bathroom floor could become occasions for incredible rage. And something happened sexually in marriage --the swearing to forsake all others, despite its slight observance, had a profound effect. Some people felt trapped by it, impelled to assert what they called freedom. Some accepted it like a rein, and in the effort to avoid pain in the form of hopeless desire, cut off occasions of desire, avoided having long talks at parties with attractive members of the opposite sex. In time, all feeling for the opposite sex was cut off, and intercourse limited to the barest politesses. But something happened to you when you did that, a kind of death seeped up from the genitals to the rest of the body, till it showed in the eyes, the gestures, in a certain lifelessness.

Marilyn French

But Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or imperfect, and Nature ever seeks an end.

Aristotle

So may he rest, his faults lie gently on him

William Shakespeare

I love art dealers. In some ways, they're my favorite people in the art world. Really. I love that they put their money where their taste is, create their own aesthetic universes, support artists, employ people, and do all of this while letting us see art for free. Many are visionaries.

Jerry Saltz

I stay way from that area, and there's only so many songs you can write about love, sex and death.

Peter Steele

I became a larger than life figure for one reason only. When you're quoted in the 'Wall Street Journal,' the 'New York Times,' constantly as the expert in the business people assume you're a lot bigger than you are. And then I had to run like hell to catch up with my own image.

Barbara Corcoran

AIDS obliges people to think of sex as having, possibly, the direst consequences: suicide. Or murder.

Susan Sontag

I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free.

Angelina Jolie

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.

George Orwell

Rance: Were your relations with your secretary normal? Prentice: Yes. Rance: Well, Prentice, your private life is your own affair. I find it shocking none the less.

Joe Orton

Some couples go over their budgets very carefully every month. Others just go over them.

Sally Poplin