As to not clog the "personal favorites" list.

  • Writing, I think, is not apart from living. Writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice. Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind.—Catherine Drinker Bowen
  • If you never fall in love with your character, you'll never be able to do that character justice. No matter who it is, no matter what the character does, you have to find the reason for it. Everyone's got a reason for what they do, even if it's a reason that they're not proud of.—Hugh Jackman
  • You never stop loving someone. You just learn to live without them.—Tupac Shakur
  • There are many reasons why novelists write – but they all have one thing in common: a need to create an alternative world.—John Fowles
  • Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.—Tim O'Reilly
  • Acting is like sex: you either do it and don't talk about it, or you talk about it and don't do it. That's why I'm always suspicious of people who talk too much about either.—Humphrey Bogart
  • I honestly couldn't care less if you like the same bands or you've read the same books. Tell me one original thing, tell me one true, real thing that brings me to my fucking knees that I've never heard before and I'm yours.—anonymous
  • When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope still is to leave the world a little bit better for my having been here. It's a wonderful life and I love it.—Jim Henson
  • Even if you think the flame has died, there's at least one lyric that'll hit that last hot spot, and then you'll find yourself as fucked as you were the day you lied and said you never wanted to see her again.—John Mayer
  • I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.—Galileo Galilei
  • Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.—Michel de Montaigne
  • Saying "I notice you're a nerd" is like saying, "Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?" In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even "lame" is kind of lame. Saying "You're lame" is like saying "You walk with a limp." Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself.—John Green
  • I always wanted to be an actor. I had the arrogance to believe I couldn't be anything else.—Daniel Craig
  • If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.—Anton Chekhov
  • Oh Lord that lends me a life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness.—William Shakespeare, Henry VI
  • O Lord, help me to be pure, but not yet.—Saint Augustine
  • Will you marry me? It's risky, but you'll get fucked regularly.—John Osbourne
  • I cannot help thinking that there is something to admire in every one, even if you do not approve of them.—E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
  • I won't be a rockstar. I will be a legend.—Freddie Mercury
  • Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.—John Waters
  • I'd like to be remembered as a guy who tried—tried to be part of his times, tried to help people communicate with one another, tried to find some decency in his own life, tried to extend himself as a human being. Someone who isn't complacent, who doesn't cop out.—Paul Newman
  • Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.—Marilyn Monroe
  • Most people put their childhood away as if it was an old hat. They forget it as if it was a phone number that does not apply anymore. They think about their life as if it was a salami which they are eating slice by slice and then they become grown-ups, but what are they now? Only those who grow up and still remain children are real human beings.—Erich Kästner
  • Show me a hero, and I will write you a tragedy.—F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don't ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?—Sylvia Plath
  • I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought, there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.—Frida Kahlo
  • It's the soul's duty to be loyal to its own desires. It must abandon itself to its master passion.—Rebecca West
  • There is a sadness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.—Washington Irving
  • A person of good intelligence and of sensitivity cannot exist in this society very long without having some anger about the inequality—and it's not just a bleeding-heart, knee-jerk, liberal kind of a thing—it is just a normal human reaction to a nonsensical set of values where we have cinnamon flavored dental floss and there are people sleeping in the street.—George Carlin
  • I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars.—Og Mandino
  • The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.—H. L. Mencken
  • It's a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the Universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma. At the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff. I'd be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. It doesn't excuse my mistakes, but I'm holding out for Grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity.—Bono
  • Oh, I just wish someone would try to hurt you so I could kill them for you.—Frank Sinatra
  • I find the whole concept of being "sexy" embarrassing and confusing. If I do an interview with photographs people desperately want to change me—dye my hair blonder, pluck my eyebrows, give me a fringe. Then there's the choice of clothes. I know everyone wants a picture of me in a mini-skirt. But that's not me. I feel uncomfortable. I'd never go out in a mini-skirt. It's nothing to do with protecting the Hermione image. I wouldn't do that. Personally, I don't actually think it's even that sexy. What's sexy about saying, "I'm here with my boobs out and a short skirt, have a look at everything I've got?" My idea of sexy is that less is more. The less you reveal the more people can wonder.—Emma Watson
  • Do you know what it's like to be the kind of girl that boys never talk to and then suddenly, a boy talks to you?—Lisa Simpson
  • Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.—H.L. Mencken
  • The world bursts at the seams with people ready to tell you you're not good enough. On occasion, some may be correct. But do not work for them. Seek any job; ask anyone out; pursue any goal. Don't take it personally when they say "no"—they may not be smart enough to say "yes".—Keith Olbermann
  • Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.—Carl Sagan
  • But who can distinguish between falling in love and imagining falling in love? Even genuinely falling in love is an act of the imagination.—John Irving
  • Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.—Elie Wiesel
  • Failure's not a bad thing. It builds character. It makes you stronger.—Billy Dee Williams
  • Ah, beware of snobbery: it is the unwelcome recognition of one's own past failings.—Cary Grant
  • Don't be afraid to feel as angry or loving as you can, because when you feel nothing it's just death.—Lena Horne
  • You don't understand women. You don't know what we are, you don't know how we feel, and you don't know what we think. You see us as dating objects and the faster we are, the more you want us. And until you can grow up and see beyond that, no matter how many girls you go out with, you will always be lonely.—Topanga, to Shawn, Boy Meets World
  • I want a woman who can sit me down, shut me up, tell me ten things I don't already know, and make me laugh. I don't care what you look like, just turn me on. And if you can do that, I will follow you on bloody stumps through the snow. I will nibble your mukluks with my own teeth. I will do your windows. I will care about your feelings. Just have something in there.—Henry Rollins
  • There is nothing wrong with loving the crap out of everything. Negative people find their walls. So never apologize for your enthusiasm. Never. Ever. Never.—Ryan Adams
  • Oh I know we're not saints or virgins or lunatics; we know all the lust and lavatory jokes, and most of the dirty people; we can catch buses and count our change and cross the roads and talk real sentences. But our innocence goes awfully deep, and our discreditable secret is that we don't know anything at all, and our horrid inner secret is that we don’t care that we don't.—Dylan Thomas
  • I don't know any form of art or entertainment that can affect people the way movies can. I know it sounds ridiculous, but they can change your world. They can change your views.—Chris Evans
  • But don't forget who you really are. And I'm not talking about your so-called real name. All names are made up by someone else, even the one your parents gave you. You know who you really are. When you're alone at night, looking up at the stars, or maybe lying in your bed in total darkness, you know that nameless person inside you.—Louis Sachar
  • I hope that I have to audition for every single job I want. I hope that I'm always struggling, really. You develop when you’re struggling. When you're struggling, you get stronger.—Andrew Garfield
  • Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit openly. Some are afraid to show even the slightest sign of affection because of fear. Fear that their feelings may not be recognized, or even worst, returned. But one thing about human beings puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within.—Sigmund Freud
  • Yes, I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.—Oscar Wilde
  • I'm simultaneously terrified of the thought of existing forever and not existing at all. Wherein is my peace?—Hannah Hart, My Drunk Kitchen, "Quesadillas! (1)"
  • But isn't all of human history simultaneously a disaster novel and a celebrity gossip column?—anonymous LiveJournal commenter
  • By persistently remaining single, a man converts himself into a permanent public temptation.—Oscar Wilde
  • I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.—Rainer Maria Rilke
  • A good movie can take you out of your dull funk and the hopelessness that so often goes with slipping into a theatre; a good movie can make you feel alive again, in contact, not just lost in another city. Good movies make you care, make you believe in possibilities again.—Pauline Kael
  • The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell. / Unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time.—Richard Silken, "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out"
  • I'll never change, but I'll never stay the same either.—Taylor Swift
mar 23 2011 ∞
nov 10 2015 +