I'm crazy and I don't pretend to be anything else.

It seems essential, in relationships and all tasks, that we concentrate only on what is most significant and important

Soren Kierkegaard

The hajj is one of the five essential practices of Islam when they make the pilgrimage to Mecca, Muslims ritually act out the central principles of their faith.

Karen Armstrong

The mandate you go with is intimidating and also is a source of respect that you gain, because you have come with this mandate from the United Nations.

Lakhdar Brahimi

The omission of good is no less reprehensible than the commission of evil.

Plutarch

The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven.

Orson Scott Card

And so we take a holiday, a vacation, to gain release from this bondage for a space, to stand back from the rush of things and breathe again. But a holiday is a respite, not a cure. The more we need holidays, the more certain it is that the disease has conquered us and not we it. More and more holidays just to get away from it all is a sure sign of a decaying civilization; it was one of the most obvious marks of the breakdown of the Roman empire. It is a symptom that we haven't learned how to live so as to re-create ourselves in our work instead of being sapped by it. A car should always be charging its battery as it runs. If it simply uses up without putting back, it has to go into dock to be recharged. It is not a sign that we are running particularly well if we are constantly needing to go into dock.

Evelyn Underhill, The Mastery of

Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.

George Eliot

One of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax.

Source Unknown

Inconsiderate, rude behavior drives me nuts. And I guess the inconsiderate rudeness of social ineptitude definitely fuels my work.

Cindy Sherman

Privacy is not something that I'm merely entitled to, it's an absolute prerequisite.

Marlon Brando

A book should be luminous not voluminous.

Christian Nevell Bovee

I think that different pleasures work for different readers - a friend of mine won't read anything that's not a cardiovascular sort of page-turner. I tend to care less about plot, but I'm a sucker for humor and strangeness.

Karen Russell