Opinionated writing is always the most difficult... simply because it involves retaining in the cold morning-after crystal of the printed word the burning flow of molten feeling.

If I remember right there are five excuses for drinking: the visit of a guest, present thirst, future thirst, the goodness of the wine, and any other excuse you choose!

Pete Sermond

Children make your life important.

Erma Bombeck

Language can't describe reality. Literature has no stable reference, no real meaning. Each reader's interpretation is equally valid, more important than the author's intention. In fact, nothing in life has meaning. Reality is subjective. Values and truths are subjective. Life itself is a kind of illusion. Blah, blah, blah, let's have another scotch.

Dean Koontz

The production of children, the nurture of those born, and the daily life of men, of these matters woman is visibly the cause.

Guru Nanak

Southerners smile more than other Americans.

John Shelton Reed

Let them eat cake.

Marie Antoinette

This administration in Washington that's in power now clearly believes that government is not only the answer to every need, but it's the most qualified to make the most central decisions for every American in every area.

Rick Perry

Hostage is a crucifying aloneness. It is a silent, screaming slide into the bowels of ultimate despair. Hostage is a man hanging by his fingernails over the edge of chaos, feeling his fingers slowly straightening. Hostage is the humiliating stripping away of every sense and fiber of body and mind and spirit that make us what we are. Hostage is a mutant creation filled with fear, self-loathing, guilt and death-wishing. But he is a man, a rare, unique and beautiful creation of which these things are no part.

Brian Keenan

I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc, is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them.

C.S. Lewis

I went back to graduate school with the clear intention that what I wanted to do with my life was to improve societies, and the way to do that was to find out what made economies work the way they did or fail to work.

Douglass North

Buddhism notes that it is always a mistake to think your soul can go it alone.

Annie Dillard

She puts her hands on either side of my face, and the room falls away. I have never gotten so lost in a kiss before. And then, the space between us explodes. My heart keeps missing beats and my hands cannot bring her close enough to me. I taste her and realize I have been starving. I have loved before, but it didn't feel like this.I have kissed before, but it didn't burn me alive. Maybe it lasts a minute, and maybe it's an hour. All I know is that kiss, and how soft her skin is when it brushes against mine, and that even if I did not know it until now, I have been waiting for this person forever.

Jodi Picoult