When a woman wants a man and lusts after him, the lover need not bother to conjure up opportunities, for she will find more in an hour than we men could think of in a century.

Science fiction has its own history, its own legacy of what's been done, what's been superseded, what's so much part of the furniture it's practically part of the fabric now, what's become no more than a joke... and so on. It's just plain foolish, as well as comically arrogant, to ignore all this, to fail to do the most basic research.

Iain Banks

Maybe philosophy - I love talking about ideas. Or maybe art history. I was thinking about psychology, then I got really afraid because everybody says it's terribly boring.

Claire Danes

A romantic comedy has to be funny and make you think about life but the obstacle that has to be overcome is key.

Jennifer Lopez

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

Theodore Roosevelt

I didn't grow up in public life. I lived with my mother in Boston, not in Washington, DC, so I was somewhat sheltered from that.

Alexandra Kerry

But what is ? What is ?The words and do not denote any really existing thing and therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a certain stage of understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a certain event occurs; I think that I cannot know it; so I do not try to know it and I talk about . I see a force producing effects beyond the scope of ordinary human agencies; I do not understand why this occurs and I talk of .To a heard of rams, that ram the herdsman dries each evening into a special enclosure to feed, and that becomes twice as fat as the others, must seem to be a genius.

Leo Tolstoy

Neither science, nor the politics in power, nor the mass media, nor business, nor the law nor even the military are in a position to define or control risks rationally.

Ulrich Beck

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

John Stuart Mill

All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.

Virginia Woolf

All I really, really want our love to do is to bring out the best in me and in you too.

Joni Mitchell

Ordinary professionalism and 20 years' experience can accomplish a lot, but it can't access the hidden places.

Jeanette Winterson

One of the the things she most liked about the city -apart from all its obvious attractions, the theatre, the galleries, the exhilarating walks by the river- was that so few people ever asked you personal questions.

Julia Gregson