"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
— Apple Computer Inc.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
— Marianne Williamson (A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles)

"I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of. "
— Joss Whedon

"I'll take crazy over stupid any day."
— Joss Whedon

"'I used to think the world was broken down by tribes,' I said. 'By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: the people who are assholes and the people who are not.' "
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five)

"We could have saved [the Earth] but we were too damned cheap."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault. Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty. There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us."
— Franz Kafka

"There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them."
— Joseph Brodsky

"Don't join the book burners. Don't think you're going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book..."
— Dwight D. Eisenhower

"Listen. To live is to be marked. To live is to change, to acquire the words of a story, and that is the only celebration we mortals really know. In perfect stillness, frankly, I've only found sorrow."
— Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)

"An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's."
— J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

"Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in."
— Leonard Cohen

"There's the life we dream, the life we deserve, and the life we get. I'll take what I got over what I deserve any day."
— Kate Jacobs

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)

"Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness."
— Richard Carlson

"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest. "
— Winston S. Churchill

"The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself."
— Albert Camus

"To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others."
— Albert Camus

"All I ask is this: Do something. Try something. Speaking out, showing up, writing a letter, a check, a strongly worded e-mail. Pick a cause – there are few unworthy ones. And nudge yourself past the brink of tacit support to action. Once a month, once a year, or just once...Even just learning enough about a subject so you can speak against an opponent eloquently makes you an unusual personage. Start with that. Any one of you would have cried out, would have intervened, had you been in that crowd in Bashiqa. Well thanks to digital technology, you’re all in it now."
— Joss Whedon

"The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn't look like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, he's going to keep digging, he's going to keep trying to do right and make up for what's gone before, just because that's who he is."
— Joss Whedon

"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."
— John Lennon

"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself."
— Albert Einstein

"What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore it knows it's not fooling a soul."
— Neil Gaiman (American Gods)

"If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."
— Dorothy Parker

"Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live."
— Dorothy Parker

"That woman speaks eighteen languages, and she can’t say 'No' in any of them."
— Dorothy Parker

"We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us."
— L.M. Montgomery

"You may tire of reality but you never tire of dreams."
— L.M. Montgomery (The Road to Yesterday)

"It's not what the world holds for you. It's what you bring to it. "
— L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables)

"Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark. If we truly knew all the answers in advance as to the meaning of life and the nature of God and the destiny of our souls, our belief would not be a leap of faith and it would not be a courageous act of humanity; it would just be... a prudent insurance policy."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"I don't want to be married just to be married. I can't think of anything lonelier than spending the rest of my life with someone I can't talk to, or worse, someone I can't be silent with. "
— Mary Ann Shaffer (The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society)