All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

When we sat down on the couch again, you curled up against my side, like you used to when you were a toddler. What I wanted to say to you, but didn't, was this:

Jodi Picoult

Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.

Leonardo DaVinci

He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.

George Orwell

You can't live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you.

John Wooden

Often we can achieve an even better result when we stumble yet are willing to start over, when we don't give up after a mistake, when something doesn't come easily but we throw ourselves into trying, when we're not afraid to appear less than perfectly polished. By prizing heartfulness above faultlessness, we may reap more from our effort because we

Sharon Salzberg, The Power of In

I got picked on a lot, even by teachers too. I liked to listen to musicals and bake, and my homeroom teacher found out and mocked me in front of the whole class for baking.

Dan Savage

Predicting has a spotty record in science fiction. I've had some failures. On the other hand, I also predicted the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of fundamentalist Islam... and I'm not happy to be right in all of those cases.

David Brin

I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.

Anne Frank

To endow the writer publicly with a good fleshly body, to reveal that he likes dry white wine and underdone steak, is to make even more miraculous for me, and of a more divine essence, the products of his art. Far from the details of his daily life bringing nearer to me the nature of his inspiration and making it clearer, it is the whole mystical singularity of his condition which the writer emphasizes by such confidences. For I cannot but ascribe to some superhumanly the existence of beings vast enough to wear blue pajamas at the very moment when they manifest themselves as universal conscience.

Roland Barthes

Evil communication corrupts good manners. I hope to live to hear that good communication corrects bad manners.

Benjamin Banneker

Don't you think that's the main reason people find [writing] so difficult? If they can write complete sentences and can use a dictionary, isn't that the only reason they find writing hard: they don't know or care about anything?

Kurt Vonnegut

I'd rather attempt to do something great and fail than to attempt to do nothing and succeed.

Robert H. Schuller