"His eyes were bright, and, indeed, he scarcely knew whether they held dreams or realities...and in five minutes she had filled the shell of the old dream with the flesh of life... "
— Virginia Woolf (Night And Day)

"Gort, Klaatu barada nikto. - said by Patricia Neal in The Day the Earth Stood Still."
— Edmund H. North and Harry Bates

"The novel is the affliction for which only the novel is the cure. "
— Joyce Carol Oates, The Faith of a Writer

"Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like paté."
— Margaret Atwood

"Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music."
— George Carlin

"If God Speaks Through Burning Bushes, Let's Burn Bush and Listen to What God Says."
— Lorrie Moore

"Why, man alive, Laura! Just look about you a little. What do you see? A world full of common people! All of 'em born and all of em' going to die! Which of them has one-tenth of your good points! Or mine! Or anyone else's, as far as that goes - gosh! Everybody excels in some one thing. Some in many!"
— Tennessee Williams (The Glass Menagerie)

"If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?"
— Isak Dinesen

"Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot."
— D.H. Lawrence

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

"If you want to write, if you want to create, you must be the most sublime fool that God ever turned out and sent rambling. You must write every single day of your life. You must read dreadful dumb books and glorious books, and let them wrestle in beautiful fights inside your head, vulgar one moment, brilliant the next. You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads. I wish you a wrestling match with your Creative Muse that will last a lifetime. I wish craziness and foolishness and madness upon you. May you live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories — science fiction or otherwise. Which finally means, may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."
— Ray Bradbury

"And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about."
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.'"
— John Steinbeck (East of Eden)

"When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I buy food and clothes."
— Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus

"Women are like teabags; you never know how strong they are until they're put in hot water."
— Eleanor Roosevelt