I think that if the novel's task is to describe where we find ourselves and how we live now, the novelist must take a good, hard look at the most central facts of contemporary life - technology and science.

Even if there are a lot women in films, there are few who are lesbians, that people know about.

Catherine Deneuve

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses

Bertrand Russell

There is no real beauty without some slight imperfection.

James Salter

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

Steven Wright

It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.

Sir Josiah Stamp

It is most necessary to avoid rusticity in any way, whether in material, design, or execution.

George Edmund Street

The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage.

Herbert Hoover

Aging happy and well, instead of sad and sick, is at least under some personal control. We have considerable control over our weight, our exercise, our education, and our abuse of cigarettes and alcohol. With hard work and/or therapy, our relationships with our spouses and our coping styles can be changed for the better. A successful old age may lie not so much in our stars and genes as in ourselves.

George Vaillant

It is not the criminal things that are hardest to confess, but the ridiculous and the shameful.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Be not penny-wise. Riches have wings. Sometimes they fly away of themselves, and sometimes they must be set flying to bring in more.

Francis Bacon

The arts babblative and scribblative.

Robert Southey

To be great is to be misunderstood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson