Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble.

Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.

Samuel Johnson

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

H. L. Mencken

We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind -- mass merchandising, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the instant translation of science and technology into popular imagery, the increasing blurring and intermingling of identities within the realm of consumer goods, the preempting of any free or original imaginative response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. For the writer in particular it is less and less necessary for him to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality.

J. G. Ballard

She got icing all over her face. I think that's why I like her. For the good stuff, she's willing to get icing all over her face. Who wouldn't want a girl like that?

Laura Ruby

Deviation from nature is deviation from happiness

Samuel Johnson

The most threatened group in human societies as in animal societies is the unmated male: the unmated male is more likely to wind up in prison or in an asylum or dead than his mated counterpart. He is less likely to be promoted at work and he is considered a poor credit risk.

Germaine Greer

Trade is much superior to piracy. You can rob and kill a man but once, but you can cheat him again and again.

Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum

Being famous before you've formed your personality, before you have that self-esteem, is dangerous.

Chris Evert

I admire directors so much, I find them incredible: they manage such a huge number of people of different characters, think of the money involved.

Catherine Deneuve

Zeal is very blind, or badly regulated, when it encroaches upon the rights of others.

Pasquier Quesnel

A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree.

Spike Milligan

One's mind suffers only when one is young and while one is ignorant of the world. When one has lived for some time, one learns that the young think too little and the old too much, and one grows careless about both.

Horace Walpole, in a letter to H