"All the arguments to prove man's superiority cannot shatter this hard fact: in suffering the animals are our equals."
— Peter Singer

"I would like to see anyone, prophet, king or God, convince a thousand cats to do the same thing at the same time."
— Neil Gaiman

"Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it."
— David Sedaris

"We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well made cocktail."
— David Sedaris (Naked)

"Shit is the tofu of cursing."
— David Sedaris

"For the first twenty years of my life, I rocked myself to sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but eventually, I had to give it up. Throughout the next twenty-two years I lay still and discovered that after a few minutes I could drop off with no problem. Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it’s funny how sleep just sort of comes on its own. Often I never even made it to the bed. I’d squat down to pet the cat and wake up on the floor eight hours later, having lost a perfectly good excuse to change my clothes. I’m now told that this is not called “going to sleep” but rather “passing out,” a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgment."
— David Sedaris (Me Talk Pretty One Day)

"Boys who spent their weekends making banana nut muffins did not, as a rule, excel in the art of hand-to-hand combat."
— David Sedaris (Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim)

"Thanks stadium pal!"
— David Sedaris

"Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past."
— Anne Lamott

"Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They depen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

"I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish."
— Anne Lamott

"The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless."
— Alan Wilson Watts

"Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes."
— Alan Wilson Watts

"“The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.”"
— Alan Wilson Watts

"I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
"
— Alan Wilson Watts

"I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody."
— J.D. Salinger

"It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road. "
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"The American way of life is not sustainable. It doesn’t acknowledge that there is a world beyond America. "
— Arundhati Roy

""Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”"
— Arundhati Roy

"Colorful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe. "
— Arundhati Roy (Public Power in the Age of Empire)

"Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story."
— Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)

""To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination.""
— Arundhati Roy

"What if one out of every three multinational corporation CEO's were raped every year? Don't you think that would raise a kind of ruckus?"
— Inga Muscio (Cunt: A Declaration of Independence)

"Yes, reason has been a part of organized religion, ever since two nudists took dietary advice from a talking snake."
— Jon Stewart

"If you don't stick to your values when they're being tested, they're not values: they're hobbies."
— Jon Stewart

"You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena."
— Jon Stewart

"There is an art, or, rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day and try it. "
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

""How can I tell," said the man, "that the past isn't a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?""
— Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

"Operation Self-Esteem--Day Fucking One."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love."
— Tom Robbins

"Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business."
— Tom Robbins

"There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for."
— Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)

"Just because you're naked doesn't mean you're sexy. Just because you're cynical doesn't mean you're cool."
— Tom Robbins

"Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need."
— Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)

"The function of the artist is to provide what life does not."
— Tom Robbins

"Let us live for the beauty of our own reality."
— Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)

"The Conch Shell´s tint was that of a vagina blowing bubble gum."
— Tom Robbins

"This cave within a cave, this paleolithic pussy, this decent into the deepest dark of fuck."
— Tom Robbins

"The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in fall and north in springtime."
— Tom Robbins (Another Roadside Attraction)

"Anyone who maintains absolute standards of good and evil is dangerous. As dangerous as a maniac with a loaded revolver."
— Tom Robbins

"But plans are one thing and fate another. When they coincide, success results. Yet success mustn't be considered absolute. It is questionable, for that matter, whether success is an adequate response to life. Success can eliminate as many options as failure. "
— Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)

"Those people who recognise that imagination is reality's master, we call sages, and those who act upon it, we call artists."
— Tom Robbins

"I've sucked way too much cement for this year. Bad juju rising off them city sidewalks. I need to babble with a brook or two, inhale starlight, make friends with some trees."
— Tom Robbins (Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates)

"I don't think there is any truth. There are only points of view. "
— Allen Ginsberg

"Life starts out with everyone clapping when you take a poo and goes downhill from there. "
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"I called my mother immediately to inform her that she was a bad parent. "I can't believe you let us watch this. We ate dinner in front of this."

"Everyone watched Twin Peaks," was her response.

"So, if everyone jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge, would you do it, too?"

"Don't be silly," she laughed, "of course I would, honey. There'd be no one left on the planet. It would be a very lonely place.""
— Sloane Crosley (I Was Told There'd Be Cake)

"A society has no chance of success if its women are uneducated..."
— Khaled Hosseini (A Thousand Splendid Suns)

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
— Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto)

"You are what what you eat eats."
— Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto)

"He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration."
— Michael Pollan