I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel, read 2,000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.

I don't think my principles change. I think the way in which you apply those principles to modern society changes.

William Hague

Authority doesn't work without prestige, or prestige without distance.

Charles de Gaulle

The market follows the artist. The artist does not follow the market.

Iimani David

Just in our lifetime our society has become looser and more private, it becomes extremely difficult to hold to any permanent commitment whatever, least of all to organized religion.

Mary Douglas

Men employ speech only to conceal their thoughts.

Voltaire

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

John Kenneth Galbraith

Never put off for tomorrow, what you can do today.

Thomas Jefferson

You know what gets me?... How everybody says fuck and shit all the time. I used to be scared shitless if I'd say fuck or shit in public, by accident. Now everybody says fuck and shit, fuck and shit all the time. Something very big must have happened while we were out of the country.

Kurt Vonnegut

And when there are enough outsiders together in one place, a mystic osmosis takes place and you're inside.

Stephen King

People talk about the horrors of war, but what weapon has man invented that even approaches in cruelty to some of the commoner diseases? Natural death, almost by definition, means something slow, smelly and painful.

George Orwell

Now that I'm staring down the barrel of the last act of my life, I'm less excited about control and solo effort, and I resent the way the business aspects interfere with my space for creative writing.

David Knopfler

I had absolutely no idea how I had ballooned during my pregnancy. All I thought about was eating plenty of food to keep my baby healthy.

Jennifer Ellison