All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.

Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was all the rest of the world to visit.

Phillip Pullman

Pleasure is sweeter as recreation than as a business.

Raymond Hitchcock

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

Eugenio Montale

Don't be afraid to fail. Don't waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from your failures and go on to the next challenge. It's OK to fail. If you're not failing, you're not growing.

H. Stanley Judd

The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the quest for Truth.

Emile M. Cioran

Any health care funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane must - must - redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent healthcare is by definition re-distributional.

Donald Berwick

I certainly do not consider myself permanently dedicated to a crusade for peace and I am beginning to see the uselessness and absurdity of getting too involved in a 'peace movement.' The chief reason why I have spoken out was that I felt I owed it to my conscience to do so. There are certain things that have to be clearly stated. I had in mind particularly the danger arising from the fact that some of the most belligerent people in this country are Christians, on the one hand fundamentalist Protestants and on the other certain Catholics. They both tend to appeal to the bomb to do a 'holy' work of destruction in the name of Christ and Christian truth. This is completely intolerable and the truth has to be stated. I cannot in conscience remain indifferent.

Thomas Merton, letter to Czeslaw

There's many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory but it is all hell.

William Tecumseh Sherman

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

Samuel Butler

When you examine the lives of the most influential people who have ever walked among us, you discover one thread that winds through them all. They have been aligned first with their spiritual nature and only then with their physical selves.

Albert Einstein

I've spent my life pursing excellence as an artist, which is what I always wanted to do anyhow.

Claire Bloom

When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.

Confucius