Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.

I used to work for a management consulting company, so I dressed differently - business casual, probably a lot of things from Banana Republic. My wardrobe now is definitely more expensive, but I always dress for the occasion.

John Legend

The more I see the less I know for sure.

John Lennon

Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt 'safe' there.

Robert Cormier

Oh, the summer night, Has a smile of light, And she sits on a sapphire throne.

Barry Cornwall

The post of honor is a private station.

Joseph Addison

Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts.

Salman Rushdie

The clear-sighted do not rule the world, but they sustain and console it.

Agnes Repplier

A dreamer he was, and ever would be. Yet dreaming need not injure us, if it do but take its turn with waking; and even dreams themselves may be turned to beauty, by favoured men to whom nature has given the powers of casting them into form.

James Anthony Froude

I got hold of a copy of the video that showed how Saddam Hussein had actually confirmed himself in power. This snuff-movie opens with a plenary session of the Ba'ath Party central committee: perhaps a hundred men. Suddenly the doors are locked and Saddam, in the chair, announces a special session. Into the room is dragged an obviously broken man, who begins to emit a robotic confession of treason and subversion, that he sobs has been instigated by Syrian and other agents. As the (literally) extorted confession unfolds, names begin to be named. Once a fellow-conspirator is identified, guards come to his seat and haul him from the room. The reclining Saddam, meanwhile, lights a large cigar and contentedly scans his dossiers. The sickness of fear in the room is such that men begin to crack up and weep, rising to their feet to shout hysterical praise, even love, for the leader. Inexorably, though, the cull continues, and faces and bodies go slack as their owners are pinioned and led away. When it is over, about half the committee members are left, moaning with relief and heaving with ardent love for the boss. (In an accompanying sequel, which I have not seen, they were apparently required to go into the yard outside and shoot the other half, thus sealing the pact with Saddam. I am not sure that even Beria or Himmler would have had the nerve and ingenuity and cruelty to come up with that.)

Christopher Hitchens

Waiting Hurts. Forgetting Hurts. But not knowing which decision to take is the worst of suffering.

Paulo Coelho

A disaster where marble has been substituted for imagination.

Ada Louise Huxtable

Life's greatest happiness is to be convinced we are loved.

Victor Hugo