I wouldnt mind seeing opera die. Ever since I was a boy, I regarded opera as a ponderous anachronism, almost the equivalent of smoking.

Christmas is far and away my favorite holiday. I love everything about it, from the event that inspired it, hoping for a white one, to wrapping presents. But mostly I love having family and friends gathered, and sharing traditions.

Ellen Hopkins

Everything starts with yourself -- with you making up your mind about what you're going to do with your life. I tell kids that it's a cruel world, and that the world will bend them either left or right, and it's up to them to decide which way to bend.

Tony Dorsett

My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks.

David Sedaris

Today the U.S. is farther from being nourished by poetry than it was a hundred years ago, when books of poems were best-sellers.

James Broughton

The church is always trying to get other people to reform; it might not be a bad idea to reform itself a little, by way of example

Mark Twain

Fairness is not an attitude. It's a professional skill that must be developed and exercised.

Brit Hume

I have had stalkers over the years. The police deal with it but it is very scary. One man kept turning up where we filmed 'Countdown in Leeds,' which was scary. It was sad as he'd been sectioned and thought I was talking to him through the TV.

Carol Vorderman

Solitude is better than the society of evil persons.

Abu Bakr

She's cute, I thought, but you don't need to like a girl who treats you like you're ten: You've already got a mom.

John Green

Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for 'Tis the only thing in this world that lasts, 'Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for -- worth dying for.

Margaret Mitchell

Love is like energy. It can never be created nor destroyed...it is just always there. You just have to realize that fact and you have to learn that as soon as you stopped loving him in the way you did that love left to somewhere else. Now all you have to do is find out where that love went. That love went to whoever the next person in your life will be. That next person could be one of your friends or someone you might dislike, you just have to find that out.

Ian Philpot

Delicacy - a sad, sad false delicacy - robs literature of the two best things among its belongings: Family-circle narratives and obscene stories

Mark Twain