I was nine or 10 years old and my father was sacked on Christmas Day. He was a manager, the results had not been good, he lost a game on December 22 or 23. On Christmas Day, the telephone rang and he was sacked in the middle of our lunch.

Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A good composer is slowly discovered a bad composer is slowly found out.

Ernest Newman

It was the courts, of course, that took away prayer from our schools, that took away Bible reading from our schools. It's the courts that gave us same-sex marriage. So it is quite a battlefield, and the Supreme Court is the highest court in the land.

Rod Parsley

I bought one of those little glass ball things with the snow init. You know, you turn it upside down then you turn it back andit starts to snow. I bought one, except this has a snow plowthat does it in rows.

Steven Wright

Our theme for this year's festivities, Dreams and Challenges of Asian Pacific Americans, speaks to the many generations of Asian Pacific Americans who worked hard to overcome economic hardship, racism and other barriers in their pursuit of the American dream.

Lucille Roybal-Allard

When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable.

Madeleine L'Engle

The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers.

Thomas Sowell

I felt, as I have often felt, that my failing the truth could have no bearing at all on the Truth itself, which could never conceivably be in any sense dependent on me or on anyone.

Marilynne Robinson

Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speak by something outside himself like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks.

Jean Kerr

And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fullfilment. you should be free indeed when your days are not without care nor your nights without a word and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked unbound.

Kahlil Gibran

Celibacy is not just a matter of not having sex. It is a way of admiring a person for their humanity, maybe even for their beauty.

Timothy Radcliffe

The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours.

T. S. Eliot