Before I settled on music, I wanted to be an archaeologist, an astronaut, all sorts of really diverse things.

My mom would give me a piece to play, but I wouldn't do any theory because when it came time to do it I would sneak back upstairs and watch TV. So, I had these kind of nonchalant lessons for years, then it just started soaking in.

Vanessa Carlton

Behold then Septimus Dodge returning to Dodge-town victorious. Not crowned with laurel, it is true, but wreathed in lists of things he has seen and sucked dry. Seen and sucked dry, you know: Venus de Milo, the Rhine or the Coliseum: swallowed like so many clams, and left the shells.

D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence

Things that look impossible suddenly seem a lot better, once you get God on board.

Jodi Picoult

Don't trust somebody that don't have a troubled period.

Benjamin Walker

It has meant a lot to me to challenge the best players in the world and to beat them. And it means a lot to me to be out here and fighting for the title and, you know, it hurts not to win it.

Andre Agassi

LoveEmbracing Tao, you become embraced.Supple, breathing gently, you become reborn.Clearing your vision, you become clear.Nurturing your beloved, you become impartial.Opening your heart, you become accepted.Accepting the World, you embrace Tao.Bearing and nurturing,Creating but not owning,Giving without demanding,Controlling without authority,This is love.

Lao Tzu

I have experienced healing through other writers' poetry, but there's no way I can sit down to write in the hope a poem will have healing potential. If I do, I'll write a bad poem.

Marilyn Hacker

Keep your freedom, keep your immortality, but somewhere along the line I hope you figure out what you're living forever for. What noble purpose you mean to achieve. Because you're no good to anyone here, not even yourselves.

Orson Scott Card

When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.

John Dryden

What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning?

Henry Miller

Highly educated young people are tutored, taught and monitored in all aspects of their lives, except the most important, which is character building. When it comes to this, most universities leave them alone.

David Brooks

What I would do is when I was younger I would draw in a sketch book something that happened in my life and then write a little something on the side about what happened or what the story.

Robert Redford