"Do you realize how hard it is to keep your mind clear when somebody’s telling you to keep your mind clear?"
— Tom Upton (Just Plain Weird)

"Art is seduction, not rape. "
— Susan Sontag

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 09: The Kindly Ones)

"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 09: The Kindly Ones)

"Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit."
— Oscar Wilde

"To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle."
— George Orwell

"Don't be so humble - you are not that great."
— Golda Meir

"Buffy's high school was built on top of a vortex of evil, the Hellmouth. And whose wasn't?"
— Sarah Vowell (The Partly Cloudy Patriot)

"In the U.S.A., we want to sing along with the chorus and ignore the verses, ignore the blues. . . No one is going to hold up a cigarette lighter in a stadium to the tune of "mourn together, suffer together." City on a hill, though -- that has a backbeat we can dance to. And that's why the citizens of the United States not only elected and reelected Ronald Reagan; that's why we ARE Ronald Reagan. "
— Sarah Vowell (The Wordy Shipmates)

"The modern mocha is a bittersweet concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and consumerism served with whipped cream on top"
— Sarah Vowell (The Partly Cloudy Patriot)

"Are cats strange animals or do they so resemble us that we find them curious as we do monkeys?"
— John Steinbeck (The Winter of Our Discontent)

"People like you to be something, preferably what they are."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"No one wants advice - only corroboration. "
— John Steinbeck

"I'm a perfectly good carrot that everyone is trying to turn into a rose. As a carrot, I have good color and a nice leafy top. When I'm carved into a rose, I turn brown and wither."
— Mary Bray Pipher

"When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning."
— Neil Gaiman (Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions)

"That kind of thinking [that writers must alleviate their guilt for leading a creative life] is based on the idea that the creative life is somehow self-indulgent. Artists and writers have to understand and live the truth that what we are doing is nourishing the world. William Carlos Williams said, "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there." You can't eat a book, right, but books have saved my life more often than sandwiches. And they've saved your life... But we don't say, oh, Maya Angelou should have silenced herself because other people have other destinies. It's interesting, because artists are always encouraged to feel guilty about their work. Why? Why don't we ask predatory bankers how they alleviate their guilt? "
— Ariel Gore

"It is a great paradox and a great injustice that writers write because we fear death and want to leave something indestructible in our wake and, at the same time, are drawn to all the things that kill: whiskey and cigarettes, unprotected sex, and deep-fried burritos."
— Ariel Gore

"I wish I had more friends, but people are such jerks. If you can just get most people to leave you alone, you're doing good. If you can find even one person you really like, you're lucky. And if that person can also stand you, you're really lucky."
— Bill Watterson (The Complete Calvin and Hobbes)