"I should like to make my mark upon the world. And... I don’t want to have to apologize for it." Libba Bray

“When we love others, we naturally want to talk about them, we want to show them off like emotional trophies. We invest them with a power to do to others what they do to us; a vain hope, as the lovers of others are rarely of much interest to us.” William James

"It was deliciously pagan…" Gregory Maguire

"teachers… are effective, they’re good at asking questions to get you to think. I don’t think they’re supposed to have the answers. Not necessarily." Gregory Maguire

"Isn’t that funny, that deity is passé but the attributes and implications of deity linger" Gregory Maguire

"He wrote something which had absolutely no meaning, but which sounded magnificent." Alexander McCall Smith

"She could think of nothing worse than sitting for hours under an umbrella, an open invitation to sandflies, looking out to sea." Alexander McCall Smith

"There was a great deal of guilt involved in the buying of expensive cheeses- delicious guilt." Alexander McCall Smith

"Men may like talking to me… but that’s about it. They’re frightened of me I suspect. Men don’t like women who think too much. They want to do the thinking." Alexander McCall Smith

"You can exist for a while in a world of music and then you walk out into the street and the street reminds you that this is what is real." Alexander McCall Smith

"Pieces of music seek resolution, have to end on a particular note, or it sounds all wrong. The same applies to our lives." Alexander McCall Smith

"No one imagines that symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them." Alan Watts