The first thing I do in the morning is to make my bed and while I am making up my bed I am making up my mind as to what kind of a day I am going to have.

It's one of the worst-kept secrets of family life that all parents have a preferred son or daughter, and the rules for acknowledging it are the same everywhere: The favored kids recognize their status and keep quiet about it - the better to preserve the good thing they've got going and to keep their siblings off their back.

Jeffrey Kluger

The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What turns me on is to walk into a sold-out venue. The audiences are so much the same as they were in the '60s. It's just an amazing thing. I can't explain it, but I hope it never stops.

Chubby Checker

Poetry, like chastity, can be carried to far

Mark Twain

We have a long way to go before we are able to hear the voices of everyone on earth, but I believe that providing voices and building bridges is essential for the World Peace we all wish for.

Joichi Ito

The heart is the inner face of your life. The human journey strives to make this inner face beautiful. It is here that love gathers within you. Love is absolutely vital for a human life. For love alone can awaken what is divine within you. In love, you grow and come home to your self. When you learn to love and let yourself be loved, you come home to the hearth of your own spirit. You are warm and sheltered.

John O'Donohue

The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close-up. The shortcut to closing a door is to bury yourself in the details. This is how we must look to God. As if everything's just fine.

Chuck Palahniuk

American public opinion is like an ocean -- it cannot be stirred by a teaspoon.

Hubert Humphrey

Religion kept some of my relatives alive, because it was all they had. If they hadn't had some hope of heaven, some companionship in Jesus, they probably would have committed suicide, their lives were so hellish.

Octavia Butler

Benjamin Franklin said there were only two things certain in life: death and taxes. But I'd like to add a third certainty: trash. And while some in this room might want to discuss reducing taxes, I want to talk about reducing trash.

Ruth Ann Minner

I'm all for bringing back the birch, but only between consenting adults.

Gore Vidal

Wearing overalls on weekdays, painting somebody else's house to earn money? You're working class. Wearing overalls at weekends, painting your own house to save money? You're middle class.

Lawrence Sutton