"You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."
— William Goldman (The Princess Bride)

"Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain."
— William Faulkner

""I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't do anything but think about him. At night I dream of him, all day I wait to see him, and when I do see him my heart turns over and I think I will faint with desire""
— Philippa Gregory (The Other Boleyn Girl)

"Your criticism sounds to me as if you have read too many critical books and are too smart in an artificial, destructive, and very limited way."
— Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)

"All the time I think I can never love you more than I already do. And then you do something or say something, and I love you more than ever. Like just now. Like now. How is it possible? Can you love someone more and more and at the same time, all the time, love them as much as it's possible to love someone?"
— Aidan Chambers (This Is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn)

"Only trust theyself, and another shall noet betray thee"
— William Penn

"An Irish Airman foresees his Death

I Know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate
Those that I guard I do not love,
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death."
— William Butler Yeats (The Wild Swans At Coole)

"When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools"
— William Shakespeare

"You remember I had a strong inclination all my life to be a painter. Under different circumstances I would rather have been a painter than to bother with these god-damn words. I never actually thought of myself as a poet but I knew I had to be an artist in some way."
— William Carlos Williams (I Wanted to Write a Poem: The Autobiography of the Works of a Poet)

"Jane Austen, who is said to be Shakespearian, never reminds us of Shakespeare, I think, in her full-dress portraits, but she does so in characters such as Miss Bates and Mrs. Allen."
— A.C. Bradley

"Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door."
— William Blake (Songs of Innocence And of Experience)

"(about William Blake)

As for Blake's happiness--a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me."

And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition. ...He burned most of his own work. Because he said, "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy."

...He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven. "
— Brenda Ueland (If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit)

"Younger citizens of the town do not know him at all save as a tall, apparently strong and healthy man who loafs in a brooding, saturnine fashion wherever he will be allowed, never exactly accepted by any group."
— William Faulkner

"when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow."
— William S. Burroughs

"" When shall we three meet again in thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly 's done, when the battle 's lost and won ""
— William Shakespeare Macbeth

""I hate journalists. There is nothing in them but tittering jeering emptiness.
"They have all made what Dante calls the Great Refusal. The shallowest people on the ridge of the earth."
WB Yeats (Irish poet)"
— William Butler Yeats

"Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius."

The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up.

But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible--villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word"
— Brenda Ueland (If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit)

"Doubt though, the Stars are fire,
Doubt that the Sun doth move,
Doubt Truth to be a liar,
But never doubt, I love."
— William Shakespeare

"Doubt thou, the Stars are fire,
Doubt that the Sun doth move,
Doubt Truth to be a liar,
But never doubt, I love."
— William Shakespeare

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. "
— William Shakespeare

"The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook."
— William James

"If you can imagine it, you can create it. If you can dream it, you can become it."
— William Arthur Ward

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. "
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"you cloak your offence by ignorance, saying that you did not know my determination in this matter. it is a double offence to do ill and color it so."
— Julia Fox (Jane Boleyn: The True Story of the Infamous Lady Rochford)

"Whoopsidaisies!"
— William Thacker Hugh Grant

"Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises,
Sounds, and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again. And then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again."
— William Shakespeare (The Tempest)

"Even should we find another Eden, we would not be fit to enjoy it nor stay in it forever. -Henry Van Dyke; from "The Shack"-
"
— Henry Van Dyke

"Doubt thou, the Stars are fire,
Doubt that the Sun doth move,
Doubt Truth to be a liar,
But never doubt, I love."
— William Shapespeare