Ray Bradbury is, for many reasons, the most influential writer in my life. Throughout our long friendship, Ray supplied not only his terrific stories but a grand model of what a writer could be, should be, and yet rarely is: brilliant and charming and accessible, willing to tolerate and to teach, happy to inspire but also to be inspired.

Anxiously you ask, 'Is there a way to safety? Can someone guide me? Is there an escape from threatened destruction?' The answer is a resounding yes! I counsel you: Look to the lighthouse of the Lord. There is no fog so dense, no night so dark, no gale so strong, no mariner so lost but what its beacon light can rescue. It beckons through the storms of life. It calls, 'This way to safety; this way to home.

Thomas S. Monson

As we sail about our lives, conflicts arise as emotions are eradicated by sadness and anger. Fireworks of terror, love, and loss fill the once clear sky. And yet, humans are clueless to see what awaits them as they continue to wallow into self-pity. Each day means gaining new insight and developing maturity. Each day means making plentiful mistakes and befuddlement. Each day means falling in love and betraying others. Each day means one day closer to death. We want to continue living, yet we want to die. We want to love, yet we want to hate. We can say that humans are contrary.

Wise Owl

I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.

Peter Ustinov

Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.

Sophocles

I insist, that if there is ANY THING which it is the duty of the WHOLE PEOPLE to never entrust to any hands but their own, that thing is the preservation and perpetuity, of their own liberties, and institutions.

Abraham Lincoln

The happiest moments my heart knows are those in which it is pouring forth its affections to a few esteemed characters.

Thomas Jefferson

I love sports, as all Bostonians seem to. I love books and movies, as all writers seem to.

William Landay

Our son is in school now. You know, he's six-and-a-half and so a big chunk of the day is taken up by school. So I'm hoping that I'll be able to certainly take him to school in the morning, maybe pick him up in the afternoon and come back to work.

Connie Chung

All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man no society will survive a shortage of women.

Germaine Greer

He was a quick fellow, and when hot from play, would toss himself in a corner, and in five minutes be deep in any sort of book that he could lay his hands on: if it were Rasselas or Gulliver, so much the better, but Bailey's Dictionary would do, or the Bible with the Apocrypha in it. Something he must read, when he was not riding the pony, or running and hunting, or listening to the talk of men. All this was true of him at ten years of age; he had then read through Chrysal, or the Adventures of a Guinea, which was neither milk for babes, nor any chalky mixture meant to pass for milk, and it had already occurred to him that books were stuff, and that life was stupid.

George Eliot

I went to this restaurant last night that was set up like a bigbuffet in the shape of an Ouija board. You'd think about whatkind of food you want, and the table would move across the floorto it.

Steven Wright

I am happy to say that everyone that I have met in my life, I have gained something from them; be it negative or positive, it has enforced and reinforced my life in some aspect.

Walter Payton