When you look in the mirror, it's usually to fix your hair or put on makeup. To examine your body searching for problem areas. We look at ourselves to see the flaw, not beauty. And we look at predictable times, in the morning, after using the bathroom, before bed. We hardly ever see ourselves when we aren't prepared for inspection. But only when you're unprepared can you see your true self, your true beauty.

Authors have established it as a kind of rule, that a man ought to be dull sometimes; as the most severe reader makes allowances for many rests and nodding places in a voluminous writer.

Joseph Addison, "The Spectator",

Nothing is less instructive than a machine.

Simone Weil

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

Agnes De Mille

I realized I wasn't going to find a man until I was willing to expose myself to possible harm, to assume the risks of rejection and betrayal and heartbreak that came along with caring about someone. Someday, I promised myself, I would be ready for that kind of risk.

Lisa Kleypas

I believe that, by and large, people are good and everybody you meet is more likely to surprise you in a positive way than in a negative way.

Anthony Horowitz

Sailing round the world in a dirty gondola oh, to be back in the land of Coca-Cola!

Bob Dylan

I think there was a revolution in poetry, associated chiefly with Eliot and Pound but maybe it is of the nature of revolutions or of the nature of history that their innovations should later come to look trivial or indistinguishable from technical tricks.

Howard Nemerov

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, P

Heaven and Earth are meeting in a storm that, when it's over, will leave the air purer and the leaves fertile, but before that happens, houses will be destroyed, centuries- old trees will topple, paradises will be flooded.

Paulo Coelho

I haven't deliberately set out to play the blonde bombshell in my movies. In fact, it's probably been quite the opposite. After the success of The Mask, I wasn't offered all that many blonde bombshell parts, to be honest. I think people believed from the beginning that I could actually walk and talk at the same time.

Cameron Diaz

A conservative is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits.

Woodrow Wilson

All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!

Camille Anna Paglia