We first fought the heathens in the name of religion, then Communism, and now in the name of drugs and terrorism. Our excuses for global domination always change.

I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off.

George R. R. Martin

A lot of folks believe their best years are behind them. But I want Americans to recognize that's not true.

Mehmet Oz

What I cannot love, I overlook. Is that real friendship?

Anais Nin

It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in , for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again.This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since , but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.

Christopher Hitchens

In truth, I am a single mother. But I don't feel alone at all in parenting my daughter. Krishna has a whole other side of her family who loves her, too. And so Krishna is parented by me, but also by her grandmother and aunts and cousins and uncles and friends.

Padma Lakshmi

The best is the enemy of good.

Voltaire

If I knew what to doI'd do more than write a song for you

Criss Jami

I always prefer to believe the best of everybody -- it saves so much trouble.

Rudyard Kipling

When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome.

Miguel de Cervantes

I did make some not-so-great relationship decisions when I was a lot younger. I do know that not all high school boys are great and wonderful and Prince Charming, and there are a few that are going to treat you that way.

Jodi Lyn O'Keefe

I do not much dislike the matter, but the manner of his speech.

William Shakespeare

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.

George S. Patton