When there are multiple versions of a story, you really have three ways to go. You can pick the most sensational version. You can try to balance things in your gut to get to what you think is the honest truth. Or you can err on the side of kindness.

It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me, ANY kind of royalty, howsoever modified, ANY kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies -- a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions... The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.

Mark Twain

Deception was an inherent trait of intelligent beings. Even his love, in her ample ardor, would weave him a guilty lie for his own good. And he treasured her just as well for those tales he was sure she'd already spun.

Darrell Drake

When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.

Khalil Gibran

When you try to find funding for a VVA function, it doesn't seem like it's any trouble at all. People come out of the woodwork with their money to help out because we went over and fought a war.

R. Lee Ermey

When I'm on stage, it's a little world I've created where I'm sort of the thing, so I have total control over everything that happens. When we're improvising, I'm with someone I totally trust. I know things are going to work out. I don't have those guarantees in life. There are no consequences on stage.

Colin Mochrie

Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.

Sigmund Freud

As far as the filmmaking process is concerned, stars are essentially worthless -- and absolutely essential.

William Goldman

The channels of intuitive knowledge are opened according to the intensity of individual need.

Jane Roberts

They can conquer who believe they can. He has not learned the first lesson in life who does not every day surmount a fear.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Although we were never pals and occasionally butted heads, my relationship with Clinton and his wife, Hillary, made me a better journalist.

Ron Fournier

Reputation is rarely proportioned to virtue.

St. Evermond

If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.

Peace Pilgrim