A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

So fantasy was fine early on, and when I discovered science fiction, I was very happy with it, because my first interest in science fiction came with an interest in astronomy.

Octavia Butler

History proves that the white man is a devil.

Malcolm X

Intellectuals incline to be individualists, or even independents, are not team conscious and tend to regard obedience as a surrender of personality.

Harold Nicolson

Wink at small faults, for you have great ones yourself.

Scottish Proverb

I think the issue is that Americans traveling abroad if gotten into legal problems should have access to a fair trial and an impartial tribunal.

Maria Cantwell

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

George Bernard Shaw

The story of Americans is the story of arrested metamorphoses. Those who achieve success come to a halt and accept themselves as they are. Those who fail become resigned and accept themselves as they are.

Harold Rosenberg

Love is so holy, so confusing. It makes a man anxious, tormented. Love, how can I define it?

Gao Xingjian

I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who I might be inside it.

Patrick Ness

I can see why people find him [Hugo Chávez] charming. He's very ebullient, as they say. I've heard him make a speech, though, and he has a vice that's always very well worth noticing because it's always a bad sign: he doesn't know when to sit down. He's worse than Castro was. He won't shut up. Then he told me that he didn't think the United States landed on the moon and didn't believe in the existence of Osama bin Laden. He thought all of this was all a put-up job. He's a wacko.

Christopher Hitchens

Joy is but the sign that creative emotion is fulfilling its purpose.

Charles Du Bos, What Is Literatu