We need somebody who's got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old - and that's the criterion by which I'll be selecting my judges.

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?

Steven Wright

The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound.The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

George Bernard Shaw

Success makes success, like money makes money.

Sebastian Roch Nicolas Chamfort

And I know that the younger generation is doing things that are so ingenious. And for them it's not a matter of a political belief or an environmental stance. It's really just common sense.

Daryl Hannah

There's a fine line between love and hate.Love frees a soul and in the same breath can sometimes suffocate it.

Cecelia Ahern

One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike - and yet it is the most precious thing we have

Albert Einstein

As a real person, he wouldn't last a minute, would he? But drama is about imperfection. And we've moved away from the aspirational hero. We got tired of it, it was dull. If I was House's friend, I would hate it. How he so resolutely refuses to be happy or take the kind-hearted road. But we don't always like morally good people, do we?

Hugh Laurie

The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved.

Marge Piercy

Children talk themselves out of their convictions as they grow up and become distracted by their huge selfish selves. All the literature is consistent on this point. Children begin to think they've imagined us.

Gregory Maguire

If we had no faults of our own, we should not take so much pleasure in noticing those in others.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.

Samuel Johnson

After I left the convent, for 15 years I was worn out with religion, I wanted nothing whatever to do with it. I felt disgusted with it. If I saw someone reading a religious book on a train, I'd think, how awful.

Karen Armstrong