...because it is the privilige and the curse of midnight's children to be both masters and victims of their times, to forsake privacy and be sucked into the annihilating whirlpool of the multitudes, and to be unable to live or die in peace.

Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.

Oscar Wilde

President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise... is to help you and your family.

Mitt Romney

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool,To weep is to risk appearing sentimentalTo reach out to another is to risk involvement,To expose feelings is to risk exposing your true selfTo place your ideas and dreams before a crowd is to risk their lossTo love is to risk not being loved in return,To hope is to risk despair,To try is to risk to failure.But risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing is nothing.He may avoid suffering and sorrow,But he cannot learn, feel, change, grow or live.Chained by his servitude he is a slave who has forfeited all freedom.Only a person who risks is free.

Anon., seen variously attributed

From Les Miserables:All at once, in the midst of this profound calm, a fresh sound arose; a sound as celestial, divine, ineffable, ravishing, as the other had been horrible. It was a hymn which issued from the gloom, a dazzling burst of prayer and harmony in the obscure and alarming silence of the night; women's voices, but voices composed at one and the same time of the pure accents of virgins and the innocent accent of children, -- voices which are not of the earth, and which resemble those that the newborn infant still hears, and which the dying man hears already. This song proceeded from the gloomy edifice which towered above the garden. At the moment when the hubbub of demons retreated, one would have said that a choir of angels was approaching through the gloom.Cosette and Jean Valjean fell on their knees.They knew not what it was, they knew not where they were; but both of them, the man and the child, the penitent and the innocent, felt that they must kneel.These voices had this strange characteristic, that they did not prevent the building from seeming to be deserted. It was a supernatural chant in an uninhabited house. While these voices were singing, Jean Valjean thought of nothing. He no longer beheld the night; he beheld a blue sky. It seemed to him that he felt those wings which we all have within us, unfolding.The song died away. It may have lasted a long time. Jean Valjean could not have told. Hours of ecstasy are never more than a moment.

Victor Hugo

I can't really define it in sexual terms alone although our sexuality is so energizing why not enjoy it too?

Audre Lorde

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

Max Planck

The biggest problem in my life is trying to be the kind of man that I want to be, the father that I want to be, and how to process the failure of my marriage.

Ethan Hawke

Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.

Hans Christian Andersen

Humble souls are fearful of their own strength.

William Gurnall

Haste to thie kiste, thie onlie dortoure bedde. Cale, as the claie whiche will gre on thie hedde, Is Charitie and Love aminge highe elves; Knightis and Barons live for pleasure and themselves.

Thomas Chatterton

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

Vladimir Nabokov

Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight.

Naomi Wolf