My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me.

On the one hand, shopping is dependable: You can do it alone, if you lose your heart to something that is wrong for you, you can return it it's instant gratification and yet something you buy may well last for years.

Judith Krantz

What differentiates us from animals is the fact that we can listen to other people's dreams, fears, joys, sorrows, desires and defeats - and they in turn can listen to ours.

Henning Mankell

Respect talent. Get respect where respect is due, but don't be caught up in yourself where you do things obliviously and not pay attention to what is going on.

Robert Griffin III

That quest for something pretty. A cheat. A cliche. Flowers and Christmas lights, it's what we're programmed to love.

Chuck Palahniuk

My grandson sees me as Lois on TV every Christmas, and that scores me points.

Margot Kidder

If you look at any Muslim society and you make a scale of how developed they are, and how successful the economy is, it's a straight line. It depends on how much they emancipate their women.

Christopher Hitchens

Many merry Christmases, friendships, great accumulation of cheerful recollections, affection on earth, and Heaven at last for all of us.

Charles Dickens

There was never going to be a right time for a band that was still recording and had health in its environment, had made a very good record and was playing well.

Peter Garrett

Our most significant opportunities will be found in times of greatest difficulty.

Thomas S. Monson

Think of something useless, and that's probably what I'll be doing. Listen, Virginia, we need to love the useless. We need to raise pigeons without a thought of eating them, plant rose bushes without expecting to pick roses, write without aiming at publication. We need to do things without expecting benefits in return. The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but it's in the curving paths that the best things are found. . . . We must love the useless, because there is beauty in uselessness.

Lygia Fagundes Telles

The story of a love is not important -- what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.

Helen Hayes

No wonder the film industry started in the desert in California where, like all desert dwellers, they dream their buildings, rather than design them.

Arthur Erickson