Random Quotes

The process of composition, messing around with paragraphs and trying to make really good prose, is hardwired into my personality.

Rick Moody American Novelist

I find it both fascinating and disconcerting when I discover yet another person who believes that writing can't be taught. Frankly, I don't understand this point of view.

Elizabeth George American Author

Why don't we call on the credit card companies to be accountable? They need to be held accountable for their predatory lending practices.

Paul Wellstone American Politician

I'd just hit the Billboard thing, and I had a good feeling. About a month ago, I received a call that said I was in the running, that I'd made the final 25. So I just wanted to place.

Arthur Godfrey American Entertainer

I don't mind UFO's and ghost stories, it's just that I tend to give value to the storyteller rather than to the story itself.

Robert Stack American Actor

In these troubled, uncertain times, we don't need more command and control; we need better means to engage everyone's intelligence in solving challenges and crises as they arise.

Margaret J. Wheatley American Writer

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.

James Madison American President

When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression no matter how holy the motives.

Robert A. Heinlein American Writer

I wanted to know the name of every stone and flower and insect and bird and beast. I wanted to know where it got its color, where it got its life - but there was no one to tell me.

George Washington Carver American Scientist

A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except by determining a habit. A quality is how something may or might have been. A law is how an endless future must continue to be.

Charles Sanders Peirce

I did not want to be a tree, a flower or a wave. In a dancer's body, we as audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomenon of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being.

Martha Graham American Dancer

People writing about me have said that I've influenced a lot of people, and there are some artists who have credited me with influencing them.

Harvey Pekar American Writer

We have the 2004 M1 here for reference, which is useful. It worked well here last year; we won the race and always did fast lap times so it will be interesting to compare it to the new bike and it will help us to understand which parts have improved.

Valentino Rossi Italian Athlete

No one in my family had a retail or marketing background. They were professionals. They didn't understand just what I was doing by going into retailing. After I started, though, it got into my blood. I knew this was what I wanted.

Andrea Jung American Businessman

Defining OO as based on the use of class hierarchies and virtual functions is also practical in that it provides some guidance as to where OO is likely to be successful.

Bjarne Stroustrup Danish Scientist

Being a grownup means assuming responsibility for yourself, for your children, and - here's the big curve - for your parents.

Wendy Wasserstein American Playwright

But it seems that the judging maybe they shouldn't at least see the practices all week long. That can taint the way they go into the judging and the outlook of what's going to happen, instead of just watching those four minutes and judging on those minutes alone.

Nancy Kerrigan American Athlete

The consequence of a world full of nuclear powers to me is so incomprehensible in terms of the dangers that that implies.

Lawrence Eagleburger American Diplomat

When my children were born, I didn't have them baptized because I felt baptism was about erasing Original Sin - something the Church said children got from their mother - and I absolutely refused to believe women carry Original Sin.

Olympia Dukakis American Actress

The most used phrase in my administration if I were to be President would be "What the hell you mean we're out of missiles?"

Glenn Beck American Journalist