The necessary has never been man's top priority. The passionate pursuit of the nonessential and the extravagant is one of the chief traits of human uniqueness. Unlike other forms of life, man's greatest exertions are made in the pursuit not of necessities but of superfluities.

I do enjoy reading some science fiction.

Colin Farrell

Literature is the orchestration of platitudes.

Thornton Wilder

The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.

Eric Hoffer

Knowledge is power, if you know it about the right person.

Ethel Watts Mumford

While it is clear that we need to make some adjustments to protect Social Security for the long term, it is disingenuous to say that the trust fund is facing a crisis.

Carl Levin

Such kindness wasn't a gift but a goad, scraping against one's skin like a yoke of thorns. She would have preferred him stiff, defensive, even offensive.

Lauren Willig

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.

Thomas Merton

Galinda didn't see the verdant world through the glass of the carriage; she saw her own reflection instead. She had the nearsightedness of youth. She reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant, though what she signified, and to whom, was not clear yet...She was, after all, on her way to Shiz because she was smart. But there was more than one way to be smart.

Gregory Maguire

Doorman - a genius who can open the door of your car with one hand, help you in with the other, and still have one left for the tip.

Dorothy Kilgallen

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

Maya Angelou

The United Nations was not set up to be a reformatory. It was assumed that you would be good before you got in and not that being in would make you good.

John Foster Dulles

We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.

Friedrich Durrenmatt