You'd think experienced political professionals would know better than to place their trust in exit polls, notoriously inaccurate surveys that had John Kerry winning the 2004 election by five points when he actually lost by three.

Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'll never stop dreaming that one day we can be a real family, together, all of us laughing and talking, loving and understanding, not looking at the past but only to the future.

LaToya Jackson

This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

Elbert Hubbard

A bad manner spoils everything, even reason and justice; a good one supplies everything, gilds a No, sweetens a truth, and adds a touch of beauty to old age itself.

Baltasar Gracian

Construed as turf, home just seems a provisional claim, a designation you make upon a place, not one it makes on you. A certain set of buildings, a glimpsed, smudged window-view across a schoolyard, a musty aroma sniffed behind a garage when you were a child, all of which come crowding in upon your latter-day senses -- those are pungent things and vivid, even consoling. But to me they are also inert and nostalgic and unlikely to connect you to the real, to that essence art can sometimes achieve, which is permanence.

Richard Ford

Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

Hervey Allen

Why do we weep once we know that everything will be alright? We weep because the only way everything could ever be alright is in fiction. We weep because what we've seen can't be true, no matter how badly we wish it were. We weep at the truth.

Adam Levin

It is more interesting to be compared to someone famous, because it lets you gauge what perceptions people have about your appearance.

Arthur Smith

In America, the race goes to the loud, the solemn, the hustler. If you think you're a great writer, you must say that you are.

Gore Vidal

Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don't let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity.

R. I. Fitzhenry

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of Humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

Mark Twain, Following the Equato

The healthiest competition occurs when average people win by putting above average effort.

Colin Powell