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

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
— Oscar Wilde

"I have nothing to declare except my genius."
— Oscar Wilde

"If you are not long, I will wait for you all my life."
— Oscar Wilde

"Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything so real as words?"
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell."
— Oscar Wilde

"An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all."
— Oscar Wilde

"Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires."
— James Joyce

"War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength."
— George Orwell (1984)

"The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."
— George Orwell (Animal Farm)

"They build their own Hells."
— Jack Kerouac

"The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words."
— Jack Kerouac (Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings)

"To elevate the soul, poetry is necessary."
— Edgar Allan Poe