Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?

As children we recognized that we belonged to an unusual, even exceptional, family, but the effect was different on each of us.

David Rockefeller

The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.

Alexis de Tocqueville

There are three people in yourself:Who people think you are, Who you think you are, and who you really are.

William Shakespeare

Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation.

Soren Kierkegaard

I suddenly realized how much I loved her when we attended Alfred Hitchcock's 75th birthday party last August. There was something magical about that night, and it made me see how much she really meant to me.

Rod Taylor

Cowardice... is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend functioning of the imagination.

Ernest Hemingway

The truth isn't the truth until people believe you, and they can't believe you if they don't know what your saying, and they can't know what you've saying if they don't listen to you, and they won't listen to you if you're not interesting, and you won't be interesting until you say things imaginatively, originally, freshly.

William Bernbach

Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.

Henry David Thoreau

That's what so sad about a lot of modern music, in my opinion, so many young bands never stay around long enough to fulfill their ultimate promise. They only get halfway there or a quarter of the way there.

Alan Vega

What is wrong with the Iranians in addition to the nuclear bomb? This is the only country on Earth in the 21st century that has renewed imperialistic ambitions. They really want to become the hegemon of the Middle East in an age that gave up imperialism.

Shimon Peres

Your mind can be either your prison or your palace. What you make it is yours to decide

Bernard Kelvin Clive

A woman is like a tea bag - you can't tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

Eleanor Roosevelt