The reason authors almost always put a dedication on a book, Annie, is because their selfishness even horrifies themselves in the end.

For the barbarians were not only at our gates but within our skins. We were our own wooden horses, each one of us full of our own doom. ....these fanatics or those, or crazies or yours; but the explosions burst out of our very own bodies. We were both the bombers and the bombs. The explosions were our own evil - no need to look for foriegn explanations, though there was and is evil beyond our frontiers as well as within. We have chopped away our own legs, we engineered our own fall. And now we can only weep, at the last, for what we were too enfeebled, too corrupt, too little, too contemptable to defend.

Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last

Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can't control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense. That's what it was like for me. I didn't plan on falling in love with you, and I doubt if oyu planned on fallin gin love with me. But once we met, it was clear that neither of us could control what was happening to us. We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me, love like that has happened only once, and that's why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I'll never forget a single moment of it.

Nicholas Sparks

And at five o'clock in the morning we left to drive to Old Tucson, and I sat with my mouth open in the van. I was stunned by the beauty of that country.

Erika Slezak

Minerva House was a finishing establishment for young ladies, where some twenty girls of the ages from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything and a knowledge of nothing.

Charles Dickens

It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is the rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution which destroys the machinery but the friction. Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices

Henry Ward Beecher

I don't believe there's any inherent darkness at the center of religion at all. I think religion actually is a morally neutral force.

Ian Mcewan

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the parts that are good are not original, and the parts that are original are not good.

Samuel Johnson

Every day I try to do breathing exercises, meditation, and yoga. These things sound awfully cliche, but they help me slow down and try to point to a truth.

David Duchovny

The truly generous is the truly wise, and he who loves not others, lives unblest.

Henry Home

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight and no vision.

Helen Keller

Politics is pop. Our job as comedians - especially me, as a late-night talk show, which is a broader audience - is to amplify what we think America is thinking.

Jimmy Fallon

Politics makes me sick.

William Howard Taft