Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourse of my book-friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

There is a kind of sleep that steals upon us sometimes, which, while it holds the body prisoner, does not free the mind from a sense of things about it, and enable it to ramble at its pleasure. So far as an overpowering heaviness, a prostration of strength, and an utter inability to control our thoughts or power of motion, can be called sleep, this is it; and yet we have a consciousness of all that is going on about us; and if we dream at such a time, words which are really spoken, or sounds which really exist at the moment, accommodate themselves with surprising readiness to our visions, until reality and imagination become so strangely blended that it is afterwards almost a matter of impossibilty to separate the two. Nor is this, the most striking phenomenon, incidental to such a state. It is an undoubted fact, that although our senses of touch and sight be for the time dead, yet our sleeping thoughts, and the visionary scenes that pass before us, will be influenced, and materially influenced, by the of some external object: which may not have been near us when we closed our eyes: and of whose vicinity we have had no waking consciousness.

Charles Dickens

The Artist, the free-flyer, the person that dares to be mad can always go back to that madness. You cannot corner that person. That person has an instrument, has a piece of paper, has a pencil, has two dollars worth of dime store paint, has some sand on the beach... That person can always go for Truth. You cannot corner that person. You can lock them in solitary and they'll scratch it on the wall, and if you cut off their hands, they will scratch it in their mind.

Wulf Zendik

To buy very good wine nowadays requires only money. To serve it to your guests is a sign of fatigue.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

I'm tired of hearing about money money, money, money, money. I just want to play the game, drink Pepsi, wear Reebok.

Shaquille O'Neal

You couldnt erase everything that caused you pain with recollection.Every memory was valuable; even the bad ones

Cassandra Clare

From tea parties to the election in Massachusetts, we are witnessing the single greatest political pushback in American history.

Marco Rubio

In times when religious or political faith or hope predominates, the writer functions totally in unison with society, and expresses society's feelings, beliefs, and hopes in perfect harmony.

Juan Goytisolo

And, re-assembling our afflicted powers, consult how we may henceforth most offend.

John Milton

Maybe if everybody in leadership was a woman, you might not get into the conflicts in the first place. But if you watch the women who have made it to the top, they haven't exactly been non-aggressive - including me.

Madeleine Albright

In old age we are like a batch of letters that someone has sent. We are no longer in the past, we have arrived.

Knut Hamsun

One of the things I had to learn as a writer was to trust the act of writing. To put myself in the position of writing to find out what I was writing.

E. L. Doctorow

You always get a special kick on opening day, no matter how many you go through. You look forward to it like a birthday party when you're a kid. You think something wonderful is going to happen.

Joe DiMaggio