Arthur C. Clark II

Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It's just been too intelligent to come here.

One of the great tragedies of mankind is that morality has been hijacked by religion. So now people assume that religion and morality have a necessary connection. But the basis of morality is really very simple and doesn't require religion at all.

How inappropriate to call this planet "Earth," when it is clearly "Ocean.

My favourite definition of an intellectual: 'Someone who has been educated beyond his/her intelligence.

Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all.

Magic's just science that we don't understand yet.

What was more, they had taken the first step toward genuine friendship. They had exchanged vulnerabilities.

In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.

I am an optimist. Anyone interested in the future has to be otherwise he would simply shoot himself.

A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

Philip K. Dick II

It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give.

I'm not much but I'm all I have.

Don't try to solve serious matters in the middle of the night.

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.

Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it's as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can't explain his to us, and we can't explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication ... and there is the real illness.

Joss Whedon

Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck.

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of. 

People love a happy ending. So every episode, I will explain once again that I don't like people. And then Mal will shoot someone. Someone we like. And their puppy.

I'll take crazy over stupid any day.

Very occasionally, if you pay really close attention, life doesn't suck.

Humor keeps us alive. Humor and food. Don't forget food. You can go a week without laughing.

The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn't look like there's a light at the end of the tunnel, he's going to keep digging, he's going to keep trying to do right and make up for what's gone before, just because that's who he is.

Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping... waiting... and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love... the clarity of hatred... the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead.

Yves Saint-Laurent

The most beautiful makeup of a woman is passion. But cosmetics are easier to buy.

Over the years I have learned that what is important in a dress is the woman who is wearing it.

Fashions fade, style is eternal.

The most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves. But for those who haven't had the fortune of finding this happiness, I am there.

I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans: the most spectacular, the most practical, the most relaxed and nonchalant. They have expression, modesty, sex appeal, simplicity - all I hope for in my clothes.

The most beautiful clothes that can dress a woman are the arms of the man she loves.

Derek Landy

Doors are for people with no imagination.

Being a detective isn't all about torture and murder and monsters. Sometimes it gets truly unpleasant...The fate of the world may depend on whether or not you can bring yourself to visit your relatives

Are you going to shoot me?' Vengeous sneered. 'I wouldn't be surprised. What would a thing like you know about honor? Only a heathen would bring a gun to a sword fight.'
And only a moron would bring a sword to a gunfight.

We're not retreating, we're advancing in reverse.

They say sarcasm is the lowest form of wit," Valkyrie said. 
China glanced at her. "They've obviously never met me."

I'm placing you under arrest for murder, conspiracy to commit murder and, I don't know, possibly littering.

It's not that I want you to go, it's just that I don't want you to stay.

We punch people, Valkyrie. That’s who we are. Embrace your inner lunatic. Fun times guaranteed.

If things go wrong, I'll lead them away. Once it's clear, get back to the car. If you don't see me in five minutes, then I've probably died a very brave and heroic death. Oh and don't Oh, and don't touch the radio--I've got it tuned right where I want it and I don't want you messing that up.

Margaret Cho

I was like, Am I gay? Am I straight? And I realized...I'm just slutty. Where's my parade?

Just because you are blind, and unable to see my beauty doesn't mean it does not exist.

George Bush isn't Hitler. He could be if he applied himself.

I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be. Because we are all what we choose.

If you are a woman, if you are a person of colour, if you are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, if you are a person of size, if you are person of intelligence, if you are a person of integrity, then you are considered a minority in this world.

I love heavily tattooed women. I imagine their lives are filled with sensuality and excess, madness and generosity, impulsive natures and fights. They look like they have endured much pain and sadness, yet have the ability to transcend all of it by documenting it on the body.

I want Jesus to come back and say 'THATS NOT WHAT I MEANT.'

Most conservatives also believe in the death penalty, but not abortion, which proves they like to procrastinate.

If we have the opportunity to be generous with our hearts, ourselves, we have no idea of the depth and breadth of love's reach.

Thomas Stephen Szasz

Two wrongs don't make a right, but they make a good excuse.

The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget.

The proverb warns that, 'You should not bite the hand that feeds you.' But maybe you should, if it prevents you from feeding yourself.

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.

The plague of mankind is the fear and rejection of diversity: monotheism, monarchy, monogamy and, in our age, monomedicine. The belief that there is only one right way to live, only one right way to regulate religious, political, sexual, medical affairs is the root cause of the greatest threat to man: members of his own species, bent on ensuring his salvation, security, and sanity.

In the animal kingdom, the rule is, eat or be eaten; in the human kingdom, define or be defined.

If you talk to God, you are praying. If God talks to you, you have schizophrenia.

When a person can no longer laugh at himself, it is time for others to laugh at him.

Clear thinking requires courage rather than intelligence.

Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-esteem. That is why young children, before they are aware of their own self-importance, learn so easily; and why older persons, especially if vain or important, cannot learn at all.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

If you're too open-minded; your brains will fall out.

I am awaiting
perpetually and forever
a renaissance of wonder

Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.

Poetry is a naked woman, a naked man, and the distance between them.

We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.

Recipe For Happiness

One grand boulevard with trees
with one grand cafe in sun
with strong black coffee in very small cups.

One not necessarily very beautiful
man or woman who loves you.

One fine day

P.D. James

If our sex life were determined by our first youthful experiments, most of the world would be doomed to celibacy. In no area of human experience are human beings more convinced that something better can be had only if they persevere.

Time didn't heal, but it anesthetized. The human mind could only feel so much.

Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound for different ports.

Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.

I don't want anyone to look to me, not for protection, not for happiness, not for love, not for anything.

Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it.

Charm is often despised but I can never see why. No one has it who isn't capable of genuinely liking others, at least at the actual moment of meeting and speaking. Charm is always genuine; it may be superficial but it isn't false.

We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.

Man is diminished if he lives without knowledge of his past; without hope of a future he becomes a beast.

Roberto Bolaño

Books are finite, sexual encounters are finite, but the desire to read and to fuck is infinite; it surpasses our own deaths, our fears, our hopes for peace.

Reading is like thinking, like praying, like talking to a friend, like expressing your ideas, like listening to other people's ideas, like listening to music, like looking at the view, like taking a walk on the beach.

If you're going to say what you want to say, you're going to hear what you don't want to hear.

So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it's fun in the end.

Nothing good ever comes of love. What comes of love is always something better.

Every hundred feet the world changes.

The pain, or the memory of pain, that here was literally sucked away by something nameless until only a void was left. The knowledge that this question was possible: pain that turns finally into emptiness. The knowledge that the same equation applied to everything, more or less.

There is a time for reciting poems and a time for fists.What twisted people we are. How simple we seem, or at least pretend to be in front of others, and how twisted we are deep down. How paltry we are and how spectacularly we contort ourselves before our own eyes, and the eyes of others...And all for what? To hide what? To make people believe what?

Nothing happened today. And if anything did, I’d rather not talk about it, because I didn’t understand it.