Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant - the digitalis of failure.

To expect alien technology to be just a few decades ahead of ours is too incredible to be taken seriously.

Paul Davies

Son, I'd say you were going at it the wrong end first, said the Judge, turning up his coat-collar. How could you care about one girl? Have you ever cared about one leaf?Riley, listening to the wildcat with an itchy hunter's look, snatched at the leaves blowing about us like midnight butterflies; alive, fluttering as though to escape and fly, one stayed trapped between his fingers. The Judge, too: he caught a leaf; and it was worth more in his hand than in Riley's. Pressing it mildly against his cheek, he distantly said, We are speaking of love. A leaf, a handful of seed--begin with these, learn a little what it is to love. First, a leaf, a fall of rain, then someone to receive what a leaf has taught you, what a fall of rain has ripened. No easy process, understand; it could take a lifetime, it has mine, and still I've never mastered it--I only know how true it is: that love is a chain of love, as nature is a chain of life.

Truman Capote, The Glass Harp

What I did in my youth is hundreds of times easier today. Technology breeds crime.

Frank Abagnale

My mother's life had been destroyed by the Garland legend.

Lorna Luft

Well, look at what people are doing for returned veterans now. The wounded warriors. They're working hard to make the wounded veterans feel that they are loved and welcomed home, unlike Vietnam. It was not a very kind, gentle world then. I think we are kinder and gentler.

Barbara Bush

Our first and last love is... self-love.

Christian Nevell Bovee

I'm now learning how to distinguish when I'm acting and when I'm not acting - offstage as well as onstage.

Micky Dolenz

A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens, some of Zola, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and, in modern drama, Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'

Tony Kushner

If women's role in life is limited solely to housewife/mother, it clearly ends when she can no longer bear more children and the children she has borne leave home.

Betty Friedan

So I was getting into my car, and this bloke says to me 'Can you give me a lift?' I said 'Sure, you look great, the world's your oyster, go for it.''

Tim Vine

It's an amazing achievement until you consider that it doesn't actually achieve anything.

Temperance Brennan

One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure it is worth watching.

AV