Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.

You shall hear how Hiawatha prayed and fasted in the forest,Not for greater skill in hunting,Not for greater craft in fishing,Not for triumphs in the battle,And renown among the warriors,But for profit of the people,For advantage of the nations.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The

My friends seem much more excited about my doing Anastasia than Brainstorm... and to tell you the truth, I feel the same way.

Natalie Wood

The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

Mark Twain

As to the 'Left' I'll say briefly why this was the finish for me. Here is American society, attacked under open skies in broad daylight by the most reactionary and vicious force in the contemporary world, a force which treats Afghans and Algerians and Egyptians far worse than it has yet been able to treat us. The vaunted CIA and FBI are asleep, at best. The working-class heroes move, without orders and at risk to their lives, to fill the moral and political vacuum. The moral idiots, meanwhile, like Falwell and Robertson and Rabbi Lapin, announce that this clerical aggression is a punishment for our secularism. And the governments of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, hitherto considered allies on our 'national security' calculus, prove to be the most friendly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.Here was a time for the Left to demand a top-to-bottom house-cleaning of the state and of our covert alliances, a full inquiry into the origins of the defeat, and a resolute declaration in favor of a fight to the end for secular and humanist values: a fight which would make friends of the democratic and secular forces in the Muslim world. And instead, the near-majority of 'Left' intellectuals started sounding like Falwell, and bleating that the main problem was Bush's legitimacy. So I don't even muster a hollow laugh when this pathetic faction says that I, and not they, are in bed with the forces of reaction.

Christopher Hitchens

Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now.

P. T. Barnum

They told me that nothing was a sin, just a poor life choice. Poor impulse control. That nothing is evil. Any concept of right versus wrong, according to them, is merely a cultural construct relative to one specific time and place. They said that if anything should force us to modify our personal behavior it should be our allegiance to a social contract, not some vague, externally imposed threat of flaming punishment.

Chuck Palahniuk

After 'Four Feathers,' I quit then because I just lost faith. I didn't like how the business was.

Wes Bentley

Fling but a stone, the giant dies.

Matthew Green

She had no recollection, later, of having decided what to do next, or of having hunted for something to wear, but somehow she was hurrying down the stairs, dressed in shadowhunter gear, the letter in one hand and the chain with the ring clasped hastily around her throat.

Cassandra Clare

We live between the act of awakening and the act of surrender. Each morning, we awaken to the light and the invitation to a new day in the world of time; each night, we surrender to the dark to be taken to play in the world of dreams where time is no more.

John O'Donohue

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

Robert Hass

No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.

Ronald Reagan