The most important American addition to the World Experience was the simple surprising fact of America. We have helped prepare mankind for all its later surprises.

Clutter is the disease of American writing. We are a society strangling in unnecessary words, circular constructions, pompous frills and meaningless jargon.

William Zinsser

In my opinion, the most fruitful and natural play of the mind is in conversation. I find it sweeter than any other action in life; and if I were forced to choose, I think I would rather lose my sight than my hearing and voice. The study of books is a drowsy and feeble exercise which does not warm you up.

Michel de Montaigne

Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life.

John F. Kennedy

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.

Pablo Picasso

Because to confide a part of your soul to something that can think and move for itself is obviously a very risky business.

J.K. Rowling

Literature boils with the madcap careers of writers brought to the edge by the demands of living on their nerves, wringing out their memories and their nightmares to extract meaning, truth, beauty.

Herbert Gold

Around '93, '94, the conventional wisdom about the Internet was that it was a toy for academics and researchers. So it was very, very underestimated for about two years.

Marc Andreessen

And it sends an important message to me, because I am sick to death to hear my opponent saying Republicans don't trust me. They do trust me, in landslide proportions, and they're proving it tonight. We're going to bury that for good.

Ben Nighthorse Campbell

I'm not a music lover in the sense that I look for something to have on. I've never had that attitude to music.

Harrison Birtwistle

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal -- every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open -- this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.

Washington Irving

From time to time there appear on the face of the earth men of rare and consummate excellence, who dazzle us by their virtue, and whose outstanding qualities shed a stupendous light. Like those extraordinary stars of whose origins we are ignorant, and of whose fate, once they have vanished, we know even less, such men have neither forebears nor descendants: they are the whole of their race.

Jean de la Bruyere

At the center of religion is love. I love you and I forgive you. I am like you and you are like me. I love all people. I love the world. I love creating. Everything in our life should be based on love.

Ray Bradbury