There is no sudden leap into the stratosphere. There is only advancing step by step, slowly and tortuously, up the pyramid towards your goals.

I am very honored for all the distinctions and accolades, but what I am most sensitive to is my clientele and the fact they are pleased with my food and my restaurants.

Joel Robuchon

Power is not a means; it is an end....Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself....The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy - everything.... No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends....We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science.... There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always - do not forget this, Winston - always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless....If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

George Orwell, 1984

Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us

Oscar Wilde

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

On long haul flights I always drink loads and loads of water and eat light and healthy food.

Lisa Snowdon

If music leaves any impression at all, it does so without regard to stylistic issues.

Aulis Sallinen

The quiet and solitary man apprehends the inscrutable. He seeks nothing, holds to the mean, and remains free from entanglements.

I Ching

Silence at the proper season is wisdom, and better than any speech.

Plutarch

It's the same with visual arts, you have some really cool, wonderful striking images that make you think and then again you have wonderful striking images that just take you away from the existing world for a second. And I like the latter a bit more.

Ville Valo

The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.

W. H. Auden

Everybody agrees that whatever the solutions are to the big problems, they... can never be without some element of education.

Nicholas Negroponte

Do we really want to know how Michael Jackson makes his music? No. We want to understand why he needs the bones of the Elephant Man -- and, until he tells us, it doesn't make too much difference whether or not he really is bad.

Frank Zappa