Great critics do not explicate a text; they describe it and then report on what they have described, if the description itself is not the criticism.(Gore Vidal writing about the critic Edmund Wilson)

We all have a hungry heart, and one of the things we hunger for is happiness. So as much as I possibly could, I stayed where I was happy. I spent a great deal of time in my younger years just writing and reading, walking around the woods in Ohio, where I grew up.

Mary Oliver

It has to be displayed, this face, on a more or less horizontal plane. Imagine a man wearing a mask, and imagine that the elastic which holds the mask on has just broken, so that the man (rather than let the mask slip off) has to tilt his head back and balance the mask on his real face. This is the kind of tyranny which Lawson's face exerts over the rest of his body as he cruises along the corridors. He doesn't look down his nose at you, he looks along his nose.

James Fenton

Arrange Whatever pieces come your way.

Virginia Woolf

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.

Raymond Chandler

One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to battle for freedom and truth.

Henrik Ibsen

I travel a lot. If you look at my suitcase, everything is extremely well-packed and well-folded people who travel with me are impressed at how organized I am. Some would refer to me as a maniac for this.

Joel Robuchon

And I like to keep whatever is mine remaining that way. It's a funny little game to play and it's a slippery slope. I always say to myself I'm never going to give anything away because there's never any point or benefit for me.

Kristen Stewart

My grandmother had six kids - one died as an infant - and she was dirt-poor, and all her kids got an education. And my mom grew up poor. And they both worked so hard and cultivated so much of their own happiness. I wanted to have that like an amulet. Not like armor, but like a magic feather. Like Dumbo's magic feather.

Lucy Alibar

If truth is beauty, how come no one has their hair done in the library?

Lily Tomlin

The term 'geek' for me is like you having a passion, interest in something that is unabashed and you don't care if people think it's not cool. You think it's cool and that's your thing.

Dominic Monaghan

Reason to rule but mercy to forgive: The first is the law, the last prerogative.

John Dryden, The Hind and the Pa

I know a woman loves me when she leaves me leftovers in the fridge from the date she went on the night before.?

Jarod Kintz