"There ain't no devil, only God when he's drunk."
— Tom Waits

"My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. "Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?" they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day."
— Tom Waits

"Because children grow up, we think a child's purpose is to grow up. But a child's purpose is to be a child. Nature doesn't disdain what lives only for a day. It pours the whole of itself into the each moment. We don't value the lily less for not being made of flint and built to last. Life's bounty is in its flow, later is too late. Where is the song when it's been sung? The dance when it's been danced? It's only we humans who want to own the future, too. We persuade ourselves that the universe is modestly employed in unfolding our destination. We note the haphazard chaos of history by the day, by the hour, but there is something wrong with the picture. Where is the unity, the meaning, of nature's highest creation? Surely those millions of little streams of accident and wilfulness have their correction in the vast underground river which, without a doubt, is carrying us to the place where we're expected! But there is no such place, that's why it's called utopia. The death of a child has no more meaning than the death of armies, of nations. Was the child happy while he lived? That is a proper question, the only question. If we can't arrange our own happiness, it's a conceit beyond vulgarity to arrange the happiness of those who come after us."
— Tom Stoppard (The Coast of Utopia)

"A gentleman is someone who can play the accordion, but doesn't."
— Tom Waits

"Italians have a little joke, that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to look after him, and that's why they have godfathers."
— Mario Puzo (The Godfather)

"There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed."
— Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin)

"I realize that they giggle and I actually laugh, that they show their cleavage and I have none to show, but just so you know, I am also a girl. I'm one of the three wise MEN. And it's gay to think that James Bond is hot."
— John Green

"The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino. "
— Joe Fox

"We do on stage things that are supposed to happen off. Which is a kind of integrity, if you look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else."
— Tom Stoppard (Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead)

"When you read, don't just consider what the author thinks, consider what you think"
— Tom Schulman (Dead Poets Society: The Screenplay)

"Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…"
— Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin)

"People are never perfect, but love can be. . . . Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. (Leigh-Cheri to Bernard, p 128)"
— Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)

"They're gonna hate us at the beginning, but we'll get 'em in the end.
Do you know why?
Because we're going to sell them cheap books and legal addictive stimulants."
— Joe Fox

"People who sacrifice beauty for efficiency get what they deserve. (Bernard Mickey Wrangle, p 99)"
— Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)

"O, because I have had only that kind of benevolence which consists in lying on a sofa, and cursing the church and clergy for not being martyrs and confessors. One can see, you know, very easily, how others ought to be martyrs.
-Augustine St. Clare"
— Harriet Beecher Stowe (Uncle Tom's Cabin)

"God kills indiscrinatly (i think i spelled that wrong) and so shall we."
— Anne Rice

"Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get."
— Forrest Gump

""I think you're villain is Angela Petrelli."
"She asked us to find the formula."
"Well. I'm fresh out of ideas."
"I see." *zaps him back into coffin to be buried*
-Hiro and Adam, season 3"
— Tom Kring

"Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.
Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and an end.
Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of bed, and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.
There is only one serious question. And that is: Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.

"
— Unknown

""In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, old people in America had prayed, 'Please God, don't let me look poor.' In the year 2000, they prayed, 'Please God, don't let me look old.' Sexiness was equated with youth, and youth ruled. The most widespread age-related disease was not senility but juvenility."
"
— Tom Wolfe (Hooking Up)

"Your opinions are your symptoms."
— Tom Stoppard (Professional Foul)

"...but it's so hard to dance that way when it's cold and there's no music."
— tom waits (adapted from a statement his daughter made)

"It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing.... A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong."
— Tom Stoppard (Arcadia)

"People are never perfect, but love can be. [. . .] Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. (Leigh-Cheri to Bernard, p 128)"
— Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)

"197
"People are never perfect, but love can be. . . . Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. (Leigh-Cheri to Bernard, p 128)""
— Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)

"I'll stay out here to make sure the fire doesn't burn."
— Uncle Tom

"Joad said, "There's a guy in McAlester - lifer. He studies all the time. He's sec'etary of the warden - writed the warden's letters an' stuff like that. Well, he's one hell of a bright guy an' reads law an' stuff like that. Well, I talked to him one time about her, 'cause he reads so much stuff. An' he says it don't do no good to read books. Says he's read ever'thing about prisons now, an' in the old times; an' he says she makes less sense to him now than she did before he starts readin'. He says it's a thing that started way to hell an' gone back, an' nobody seems to be able to stop her, an' nobody got sense enough to change her. He says for God's sake don't read about her because he says for one thing you'll jus' get messed up worse, an' for another you won't have no respect for the guys that work the gover'ments"."
— John Steinbeck