With the modern diseases (once TB, now cancer) the romantic idea that the disease expresses the character is invariably extended to assert that the character causes the disease -- because it has not expressed itself. Passion moves inward, striking and blighting the deepest cellular recesses.

People who do not know how to laugh are always pompous and self-conceited.

William Makepeace Thackeray

To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

Thomas A. Edison

One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.

Paulo Coelho

When my old man wanted sex... my mother would show him a picture of me.

Rodney Dangerfield

Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race -- the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

Mark Twain

Children are our second chance to have a great parent-child relationship.

Laura Schlessinger

Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.

George Eliot

And the funny thing is, I've always been an optimist - it's practically a congenital disorder with me.

Molly Ivins

We must do the best we can with what we have.

Edward Rowland Sill

You don't have to be old in America to say of a world you lived in: That world is gone.

Peggy Noonan

There are two men inside the artist, the poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.

Emile Zola

For ritual allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular to perform the spiritual, as dancing allows the tongue-tied man a ceremony of love.

Andre Dubus