It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental time --but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence. We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength. We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling. Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given.

Trust not too much to an enchanting face.

Virgil

I had a really creative teacher at primary school. He used to get us doing things such as singing Spandau Ballet in drag in the choir, and I remember loving it.

Dominic Cooper

I do like escapism. I like going to the movies on a Friday night and seeing something fun.

Charlie Kaufman

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.

Elbert Hubbard

Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.

Carl Hiaasen

But if men would give heed to the nature of substance they would doubt less concerning the Proposition that Existence appertains to the nature of substance: rather they would reckon it an axiom above all others, and hold it among common opinions. For then by substance they would understand that which is in itself, and through itself is conceived, or rather that whose knowledge does not depend on the knowledge of any other thing.

Baruch (_Benedict de) Spinoza

Error is acceptable as long as we are young but one must not drag it along into old age.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy She sat like patience on a monument, Smiling at grief

William Shakespeare

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Marriage is an exercise in torture.

Frances Conroy

She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion.

Jean Rhys

Lives are snowflakes - forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close in

Neil Gaiman