"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
— Douglas Adams

"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained."
— Marie Curie

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
— Albert Einstein

"Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
— Albert Einstein

"Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
— Albert Einstein

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough"
— Mae West

"I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it."
— Mae West

"Cultivate your curves - they may be dangerous but they won't be avoided."
— Mae West

"Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger's touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body.
But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality.
In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh.
The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves.
In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber."
— Diana Gabaldon (Dragonfly in Amber)

"For I had come back, and I dreamed once more in the cool air of the Highlands. And the voice of my dream still echoed through ears and heart, repeated with the sound of Brianna's sleeping breath. "You are mine," it had said. "Mine. And I will not let you go."
— Diana Gabaldon (Dragonfly in Amber)

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

"Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow."
— Mark Twain

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
— C.S. Lewis

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
— Maya Angelou

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."
— George Eliot

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
— Mark Twain

"Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away."
— Robert Maynard Hutchins

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

"Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."
— Mark Twain

"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
— Mark Twain

"The Rumors of my Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated."
— Mark Twain

"Art is a process, not a product."
— MaryAnn F. Kohl

"Never say anything you wouldn't want to see on the front page of The Washington Post. "
— Maryann Friedman

"Most men are reasonably useful in a crisis. The difficulty lies in convincing them that the situation has reached a critical point"
— Elizabeth Peters

"No woman really wants a man to carry her off; she only wants him to want to do it."
— Elizabeth Peters

"Marriage, in my view, should be a balanced stalemate between equal adversaries."
— Elizabeth Peters (The Mummy Case)

"I do not scruple to employ mendacity and a fictitious appearance of female incompetence when the occasion demands it."
— Elizabeth Peters

"Weak desires bring weak results, just as a small amount of fire brings a small amount of heat."
— Napoleon Hill

""I tried every diet in the book. I tried some that weren't in the book. I tried eating the book. It tasted better than most of the diets.""
— Dolly Parton

"The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook."
— Julia Child

"In two decades I've lost a total of 789 pounds. I should be hanging from a charm bracelet."
— Erma Bombeck

"Eating rice cakes is like chewing on a foam coffee cup, only less filling."
— Dave Barry

"I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond. "
— Mae West

""A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet." "
— Phyllis McGinley

"Food is an important part of a balanced diet."
— Fran Lebowitz

"You can only be young once. But you can always be immature"
— Dave Barry

"If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be 'meetings.' "
— Dave Barry

"The problem with winter sports is that -- follow me closely here -- they generally take place in winter."
— Dave Barry

"Never under any circumstances take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night. "
— Dave Barry

"Aside from velcro, time is the most mysterious substance in the universe. You can't see it or touch it, yet a plumber can charge you upwards of seventy-five dollars per hour for it, without necessarily fixing anything."
— Dave Barry

"Camping is nature's way of promoting the motel business. "
— Dave Barry

"So many books, so little time."
— Frank Zappa

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."
— Groucho Marx (The Essential Groucho)

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"A day without sunshine is like, you know, night."
— Steve Martin

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
— Jim Henson

"I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens."
— Woody Allen

"Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one. "
— Bill Gates

"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four people is suffering from a mental illness. Look at your 3 best friends. If they're ok, then it's you."
— Rita Mae Brown