You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.

When you see people who are really good at game shows, the one common attribute is a cool head under pressure: an ability to perform as well in the studio, surrounded by lights and noise, as you do on your couch.

Ken Jennings

I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.

Joseph Campbell

Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.

Leonard Cohen

Happiness is rarely absent it is we that know not of its presence.

Maurice Maeterlinck

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

L.P. Hartley, The GoBetween, 195

First love is first love, first marriage is first marriage, disappointment is disappointment.

Maximilian Schell

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

James Thurber

Violence is unnecessary and costly. Peace is the only way.

Julius Kambarge Nyerere

Oh, it is sure as it is sad That any lad is every lad, And what's a girl, to dare implore Her dear be hers forevermore? Though he be tried and he be bold, And swearing death should he be cold, He'll run the path the others went.... But you, my sweet, are different.

Dorothy Parker, from Incurable

Men marry because they are tired women, because they are curious both are disappointed.

Oscar Wilde

Canada has never been a melting pot; more like a tossed salad.

Arnold Edinborough

In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.

Ralph Waldo Emerson