To be a materialist is to acknowledge objective truth, which is revealed to us by our sense organs.

Perfect heroines, like perfect heroes, aren't relatable, and if you can't put yourself in the protagonist's shoes, not only will they not inspire you, but the book will be pretty boring.

Cassandra Clare

Corpses are more fit to be thrown out than is dung.

Heraclitus

Readers of the twenty-first chapter must decide for themselves whether it enhances the book they presumably know or is really a discardable limb. I meant the book to end in this way, but my aesthetic judgement may have been faulty. Writers are rarely their own best critics, nor are critics. 'Quod scripsi scripsi' said Pontius Pilate when he made Jesus Christ the King of the Jews. 'What I have written I have Written.' We can destroy what we have written but we cannot unwrite it. I leave what I wrote with what Dr. Johnson called frigid indifference to the judgement of that .00000001 of the American population which cares about such things. Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out. You are free.

Anthony Burgess, November, 1986

Humore is an affirmation of man's dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

Romain Cary

The most used piece of kit in my kitchen is my saucepan. I use it every morning to cook my porridge in. The least used piece of equipment? I'd say a food mixer. I've never used it, I don't really know what they're for.

David Walliams

The most important thing in a relationship between a man and a woman is that one of them must be good at taking orders.

Linda Festa

It wasn't that Nanny Ogg sang badly. It was just that she could hit notes which, when amplified by a tin bath half full of water, ceased to be sound and became some sort of invasive presence.

Terry Pratchett

The monarchy is a labor intensive industry.

Harold Wilson

The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it.

Bill Cosby

Those who invoke Secular tyranny in contrast to religion are hoping that we will forget two things: the connection between the Christian churches and fascism, and the capitulation of the churches to National Socialism.

Christopher Hitchens

Slow buds the pink dawn like a rose From out night's gray and cloudy sheath; Softly and still it grows and grows, Petal by petal, leaf by leaf.

Susan Coolidge

Each man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him. But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor. Then all goes well. He has changed his market-cart into a chariot of the sun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson