Writing is a question of finding a certain rhythm. I compare it to the rhythms of jazz. Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

Lenience will operate with greater force, in some instances than rigor. It is therefore my first wish to have all of my conduct distinguished by it.

George Washington

I basically became a cheerleader because I had a very strict mom. That was my way of being a bad girl.

Sandra Bullock

No voice teacher can be all things to all people. You have to gain information from whatever sources you can. You have to listen.

Renee Fleming

Setting goals for your game is an art. The trick is in setting them at the right level neither too low nor too high.

Greg Norman

The one thing over which you have absolute control is your own thoughts. It is this that puts you in a position to control your own destiny.

Paul G. Thomas

Random chance plays a huge part in everybody's life.

Gary Gygax

I have quite a robust relationship with regret. You simply don't know what the alternative would have been.

Juliet Stevenson

Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.

John Cheever

But every great scripture, whether Hebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese, apart from its religious value will be found to have some rare and special beauty of its own and in this respect the original Bible stands very high as a monument of sublime poetry and of artistic prose.

Lafcadio Hearn

The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.

Ray Bradbury

Natasha, with a vigorous turn from her heel on to her toe, walked over to the middle of the room and stood still... Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her bosom heaved, a serious expression came into her face. She was thinking of no one and of nothing at that moment, and from her smiling mouth poured forth notes, those notes that anyone can produce at the same intervals, and hold for the same length of time, yet a thousand times leave us cold, and the thousand and first time they set us thrilling and weeping.

Leo Tolstoy

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.

Thomas Jefferson