Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Rock and Roll: Music for the neck downwards.

Keith Richards

A little later, the Apollo mission was consummated and there were Americans on the moon. I remember distinctly looking up from the quad on what was quite a moon-flooded night, and thinking about it. They made it! The Stars and Stripes are finally flown on another orb! Also, English becomes the first and only language spoken on a neighboring rock! Who could forbear to cheer? Still, the experience was poisoned for me by having to watch Richard Nixon smirking as he babbled to the lunar-nauts by some closed-circuit link. Was even the silvery orb to be tainted by the base, earthbound reality of imperialism?

Christopher Hitchens

In a world that holds books and babies and canyon trails, why should one condemn oneself to live day-in, day-out with people one does not like, and sell oneself to chaperone and correct them?Journal entry, May 20, 1913 during her brief career as a boarding-school teacher

Ruth Benedict, An Anthropologist

Perhaps a physicist would know at once why this whole idea was absurd. But then, perhaps a physicist would be so locked into the consensus of his scientific community that it would be harder for him to accept an idea that transformed the meaning of everything he knew. Even if it were true.

Orson Scott Card

Speculation is perfectly all right, but if you stay there you've only founded a superstition. If you test it, you've started a science.

Hal Clement

I wanted to escape Small Town U.S.A. To dismiss the boundaries, to explore. My life experience came from watching movies, TV, and reading books and magazines. When your culture comes from watching TV everyday, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities.

Trent Reznor

For some life lasts a short while, but the memories it holds last forever.

Laura Swenson

We'll love you just the way you are if you're perfect.

Alanis Morissette

Once when I was young and true, Someone left me sad- Broke my brittle heart in two; And that was very bad. Love is for unlucky folk. Love is but a curse. Once there was a heart I broke; And that, I think, is worse.

Dorothy Parker, A Very Short Son

One who imitates what is bad always goes beyond his model; while one who imitates what is good always comes up short of it.

Francesco Guicciardini

Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

Eugene O'Neill

Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice.

Friedrich Nietzsche