I first became a vegetarian when I was nine, in response to an argument made by a radical babysitter. My great change - which lasted a couple of weeks - was based on the very simple instinct that it's wrong to kill animals for food.

The hardest thing about being in this business is just being able to be yourself. People act like there's this one set of rules to follow to be a pop star and I think, 'Well, you say I'm a pop star, so maybe that's not true.'

Kelly Clarkson

Tobacco and alcohol, delicious fathers of abiding friendships and fertile reveries.

Luis Bunuel

To understand at all what life means, one must begin with Christian belief. And I think knowledge may be sorrow with a man unless he loves.

William Mountford

I force my eyes upward and look at Mia for the first time. She's still beautiful. Not in an obvious Vanessa LeGrande or Bryn Shraeder kind of way. In a quiet way that's always been devastating to me. Her hair, long and dark, is down now, swimming damply against her bare shoulders, which are still milky white and covered with the constellation of freckles that I used to kiss. The scar on her left shoulder, the one that used to be an angry red weld is silvery pink now. Almost like the latest rage in tattoo accessories. Almost pretty.

Gayle Forman

When written in Chinese, the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters. One represents danger and the other represents opportunity.

John F. Kennedy

Circles, like the soul, are neverending and turn round and round without a stop

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades

Mark Twain

Adversity is the state in which man mostly easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

Samuel Johnson

Think not I am what I appear.

Lord (George Gordon) Byron

Concentration is the factor that causes the great discrepancy between men and the results they achieve... the difference in their power of calling together all the rays of their ability and concentrating on one point.

Orison Swett Marden

At that moment, Oliver realized that home is not a place, but rather, the people who love you.

Jodi Picoult

The thing you can't let go of is gravity. The reality of gravity in writing. If someone says something really mean in a sitcom, and the next wave isn't a reaction to the reality of that, you start losing relatability. In a lot of romantic comedies, they throw out the rules of life.

Michael Patrick King