We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further. - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

I let out a battle cry. Sure, a lot of people might have mistaken it for a sudden yelp of unmanly fear, but trust me. It was a battle cry. - Jim Butcher, My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding

No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found. - Samuel Beckett

Dusk is just an illusion because the sun is either above the horizon or below it. And that means that day and night are linked in a way that few things are there cannot be one without the other yet they cannot exist at the same time. How would it feel I remember wondering to be always together yet forever apart? - Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer? And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye. - Terry Pratchett, The Truth

Why I Wake Early Hello, sun in my face.Hello, you who made the morningand spread it over the fieldsand into the faces of the tulipsand the nodding morning glories,and into the windows of, even, themiserable and the crotchety – best preacher that ever was,dear star, that just happensto be where you are in the universeto keep us from ever-darkness,to ease us with warm touching,to hold us in the great hands of light –good morning, good morning, good morning.Watch, now, how I start the dayin happiness, in kindness. - Mary Oliver

Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then I was born...Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole. - Vida Winter - Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination. - John Keats

I am perfectly qualified to give you an injection. You're not going to tell me you're afraid of a little prick?I wouldn't call you that... - Anthony Horowitz, Scorpia

From 'the lesson of the moth':and before i could argue himout of his philosophyhe went and immolated himselfon a patent cigar lighteri do not agree with himmyself i would rather havehalf the happiness and twicethe longevitybut at the same time i wishthere was something i wantedas badly as he wanted to fry himself - Don Marquis, Archy and Mehitabel

To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds, to rise above our immediate surroundings.We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in. - Oliver Sacks

Love is the will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth... Love is as love does. Love is an act of will -- namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love. - M. Scott Peck

Every search begins with beginner’s luck. And every search ends with the victor’s being severely tested. - Paulo Coelho

Damien has died and gone straight to gay boy heaven,' Shaunee said... - P.C. Cast

Hardships make or break people. - Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

After all, a woman who doesn't love cats is never going to be make a man happy. - Orhan Pamuk, The Museum of Innocence

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. - Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living

A painter should begin every canvas with a wash of black, because all things in nature are dark except where exposed by the light. - Leonardo da Vinci

I had a dream about you. You were lost in a daydream, when I walked in and you began screaming. But I know that could never actually happen. In real life I only enter people’s nightmares. - Bauvard, I Had a Dream About You

Dancers are the athletes of God. - Albert Einstein