God lends a helping hand to the man who tries hard.

I was raised thinking that moral and ethical standards are universals that apply equally to everyone. And these values aren't easily compatible with the kind of religion that posits a Creator. To my way of thinking, an omnipotent being who sets up a universe in which thinking beings proliferate, grow old, and die (usually in agony, alone, and in fear) is a cosmic sadist.

Charles Stross

Sometimes I dream that I'm writing a memoir. A memoir would just be the thing to keep me in the hearts and memories of my adoring public.

John Green

Let him think I am more man than I am and I will be so.

Ernest Hemingway

To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle

Albert Einstein

Love your neighbor, yet pull not down your hedge.

English Proverb

After my father had seen me in five or six things, he said, Son, your mother and I really enjoyed your recent film, and I must say that you're a lot like John Wayne. And I said, How so? And he said, Well, you're exactly the same in all your roles. Now, as a modern American actor, that's not what you want to hear. But for a guy who watched John Wayne movies and grew up in Iowa, it's a sterling compliment.

Dermot Mulroney

With women, I've got a long bamboo pole with a leather loop on the end. I slip the loop around their necks so they can't get away or come too close. Like catching snakes.

Marlon Brando

When I was 14, I felt very rundown I had a home to go to, but I felt like I was 60 or something, older than I feel now. And I don't know if it's something that happens at 14, or whether it was adolescence or whether I was gay, or closeted gay, or whatever it was, I felt that.

Gus Van Sant

Lexicographer: a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge, that busies himself in tracing the original, and detailing the signification of words.

Samuel Johnson

Tact is after all a kind of mind reading.

Sarah Orne Jewett

Most people when they come to you for advice, come to have their own opinions strengthened, not corrected.

Josh Billings

Whoever has provoked men to rage against him has always gained a party in his favor, too.

Friedrich Nietzsche