So many times, people told me I can't do this or can't do that. My nature is that I don't listen very well. I'm very determined, and I believe in myself. My parents brought me up that way. Thank God for that. I don't let anything stand in my way.

When I was in Paris, all of the German refugees began to flow in and it was a very sad time.

Elliott Carter

All of us gave it all we've got, overcame a whole lot just being on the show and learned a lot about ourselves. We're just normal people trying to do what we love and follow our dreams.

Carrie Underwood

Discord occasions a momentary distress to the ear, which remains unsatisfied, and even uneasy, until it hears something better.

Charles Burney

A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.

George William Curtis

One's religion is one's own possession and he has a right to it.

Paul Harris

When they're standing right in front of you, kings are a kind of speech impediment.

Terry Pratchett

Poetry is the exquisite expression of exquisite expressions.

Joseph Roux

Fantasy is escapism, but wait... Why is this wrong? What are you escaping from, and where are you escaping to? Is the story opening windows or slamming doors? The British author G.K. Chesterton summarized the role of fantasy very well. He said its purpose was to take the everyday, commonplace world and lift it up and turn it around and show it to us from a different perspective, so that once again we see it for the first time and realize how marvelous it is. Fantasy - the ability to envisage the world in many different ways - is one of the skills that make us human.

Terry Pratchett

Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.

Doris Lessing

Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.

Neil Gaiman

An old man turned ninety-eightHe won the lottery and died the next dayIt's a black fly in your ChardonnayIt's a death row pardon two minutes too lateIt's a traffic jam when you're already lateIt's a no-smoking sign on your cigarette breakIt's like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knifeIt's meeting the man of my dreamsAnd then meeting his beautiful wife.

Alanis Morissette, Song Ironic

A certain recluse, I know not who, once said that no bonds attached him to this life, and the only thing he would regret leaving was the sky.

Yoshida Kenko