I think romance is friendship and attraction sort of meeting together and that does influence what I'm writing a lot. I try to establish the attraction, obviously, but I also think it's important to show the characters having actual conversations about things other than their feelings for each other - and to develop their friendship on the page.

Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.

Frank Herbert

I've never missed a gig yet. Music makes people happy, and that's why I go on doing it - I like to see everybody smile.

Buddy Guy

What I know is my music gets blamed for school shootings.

Marilyn Manson

There's nothing more romantic than Italian food.

Elisha Cuthbert

Charity But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world; yet is every man his greatest enemy, and, as it were, his own executioner.

Sir Thomas Browne

The world is my country, science is my religion.

Christiaan Huygens

Once I make up my mind, I'm full of indecision.

Oscar Levant

A mighty monarch in the days of oldMade offer of high honour, wealth and gold,To one who should produce in form conciseA motto for his guidance, terse yet wise---A precept, soothing in his hours forlorn,Yet one that in his prosperous days would warn.Many the maxims sent the king, men say.The one he chose: This too shall pass away.Oh, jewel sentence from the mine of truth!What riches it contains for age or youth.No stately epic, measured and sublime,So comforts, or so counsels, for all timeAs these few words. Go write them on your heartAnd make them of your daily life a part.Has some misfortune fallen to your lot?This too will pass away--absorb the thought.And wait; your waiting will not be in vain,Time gilds with gold the iron links of pain.The dark to-day leads into light to-morrow;There is no endless joy, no endless sorrow.Are you upon earth's heights? No cloud in view?Go read your motto once again: This tooShall pass away; fame, glory, place and power,They are but little baubles of the hour,Flung by the ruthless years down in the dust.Take warning and be worthy of God's trust.Use well your prowess while it lasts; leave bloom,Not blight, to mark your footprints to the tomb.The truest greatness lies in being kind,The truest wisdom in a happy mind.He who desponds, his Maker's judgment mocks;The gloomy Christian is a paradox.Only the sunny soul respects its God.Since life is short we need to make it broad;Since life is brief we need to make it bright.Then keep the old king's motto well in sight,And let its meaning permeate each day.Whatever comes, This too shall pass away.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Poems of Po

Here he lies where he longed to be;Home is the sailor, home from sea,and the hunter home from the hill.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Requiem,

Your outlook upon life, your estimate of yourself, your estimate of your value are largely colored by your environment. Your whole career will be modified, shaped, molded by your surroundings, by the character of the people with whom you come in contact every day...

Orison Swett Marden

I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and the action which follows becomes as instinctive as the blinking of my eyelids. With these words I can condition my mind to perform every action necessary for my success. I will act now. I will repeat these words again and again and again. I will walk where failures fear to walk. I will work when failures seek rest. I will act now for now is all I have. Tomorrow is the day reserved for the labor of the lazy. I am not lazy. Tomorrow is the day when the failure will succeed. I am not a failure. I will act now. Success will not wait. If I delay, success will become wed to another and lost to me forever. This is the time. This is the place. I am the person.

Og Mandino

Every life has dark tracts and long stretches of somber tint, and no representation is true to fact which dips its pencil only in light, and flings no shadows on the canvas.

Alexander Maclaren