"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

""Step up to red alert."
"Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb."
- Rimmer & Kryten, "Red Dwarf" "
— Rob Grant

"Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese."
— G.K. Chesterton (Alarms and Discursions)

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true."
— James Branch Cabell

"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad."
— Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash)

"My rhymes are so potent that in this small segment I made all of the ladies in the area pregnant. Yes, sometimes my lyrics are sexist but you lovely bitches and hos should know I'm trying to correct this.
"
— Jemaine Clement

"JEMAINE
Lisa?

BRET
Yes, she's in Delta Force. She's been deployed to Fallujah.

JEMAINE
But she works in the croissant shop.

BRET
Yeah, she's got two jobs. She's a pastry chef and a sniper."
— Flight of the Conchords

"Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.
Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?
Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime; so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.
Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?
Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.
Bob Slydell: Eight?
Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled; that, and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired. "
— Mike Judge

"I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise.'"
— Richard Brautigan

"Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft were written by men. "
— Neil Gaiman (Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch)

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
— Douglas Adams

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
— Douglas Adams (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
— John Lennon

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

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."
— Albert Einstein

"
"Desiderata"
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender,
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly, and listen to others,
even to the dull and ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons;
they are vexatious to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain or bitter,
for always there will be
greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career
however humble;
it is a real possession in the
changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs,
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you
to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love,
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,
it is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit
to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore, be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham,
drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

"
— Max Ehrmann

"Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players, and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol and dental insurance. Choose fixed- interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisure wear and matching luggage. Choose a three piece suite on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing sprit- crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing you last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked-up brats you have spawned to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?"
— Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting)

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

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
— Oscar Wilde

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
— Oscar Wilde

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

"You can never be overdressed or overeducated."
— Oscar Wilde

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination."
— Oscar Wilde

"I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there."
— Oscar Wilde

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

"Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
— Oscar Wilde

"I can resist anything, except temptation."
— Oscar Wilde

"If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything."
— Marilyn Monroe

"Who said nights were for sleep?"
— Marilyn Monroe

"It's not true that I had nothing on. I had the radio on."
— Marilyn Monroe

"Ever notice how 'What the hell' is always the right answer?"
— Marilyn Monroe

"I just want to be wonderful."
— Marilyn Monroe

"Love is the answer, but while you are waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions."
— Woody Allen

"Chastity - the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions."
— Aldous Huxley

"It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone."
— Nick Hornby (How to Be Good)

"We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can't have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we're so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they're not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. ... Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you're living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute."
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

"The trouble with my generation is that we all think we're fucking geniuses. Making something isn't good enough for us, and neither is selling something, or teaching something, or even just doing something; we have to be something."
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

"Please stop patronizing those who are reading a book - The Da Vinci Code, maybe- because they are enjoying it. For a start, none of us know what kind of an effort this represents for the individual reader. It could be his or her first full-length adult novel; it might be the book that finally reveals the purpose and joy of reading to someone who has hitherto been mystified by the attraction books exert on others. And anyway, reading for enjoyment is what we should all be doing. I don't mean we should all be reading chick lit or thrillers (although if that's what you want to read, it's fine by me, because here's something no one else will tell you: if you don't read the classics, or the novel that won this year's Booker Prize, then nothing bad will happen to you; more importantly,nothing good will happen to you if you do); I simply mean that turning pages should not be like walking through thick mud. The whole purpose of books is that we read them, and if you find you can't, it might not be your inadequacy that's to blame. "Good" books can be pretty awful sometimes."
— Nick Hornby (Housekeeping vs. The Dirt)

"He's at the chocolate teapot end of the competency scale."
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

"I'm very good at the past. It's the present I can't understand."
— Nick Hornby (High Fidelity: A Novel)

"Sarcasm and compassion are two of the qualities that make life on earth tolerable. "
— Nick Hornby

"If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier."
— Nick Hornby (High Fidelity)

"That’s the thing with the young these days, isn’t it? They watch too many happy endings. Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned, found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning only that life is hollow, dismal, brutish, and short."
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)

"One has so many more opinions about what has gone wrong than about what is perfect."
— Nick Hornby (31 Songs)

"The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity."
— Dorothy Parker

"If I didn't care for fun and such,
I'd probably amount to much.
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn."
— Dorothy Parker

"Don't look at me in that tone of voice."
— Dorothy Parker

"By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing.
And he vows his passion is,
Infinite, undying.
Lady make note of this --
One of you is lying."
— Dorothy Parker