Tim Minchin

You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work?

Science adjusts its views based on what's observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that belief can be preserved.

Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can break hearts.

Isn’t this enough? Just this world? Just this beautiful, complex wonderfully unfathomable world? How does it so fail to hold our attention that we have to diminish it with the invention of cheap, man-made myths and monsters?

Don’t Seek Happiness - Happiness is like an orgasm: if you think about it too much, it goes away. Keep busy and aim to make someone else happy, and you might find you get some as a side effect. We didn’t evolve to be constantly content. Contented Australopithecus Afarensis got eaten before passing on their genes.

I am no nihilist. I am not even a cynic. I am, actually, rather romantic. And here’s my idea of romance: You will soon be dead. Life will sometimes seem long and tough and, god, it’s tiring. And you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad. And then you’ll be old. And then you’ll be dead.

Walker Percy

You can get all A's and still flunk life.

Why did God make women so beautiful and man with such a loving heart?

Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion.

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen. When it does at last dawn on a man that you really want to hear about his business, the look that comes over his face is something to see.

You live in a deranged age - more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.

What is the nature of the search? You ask. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

Garth Nix

Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?

Touchstone watched, suddenly conscious that he probably only had five seconds left to be alone with Sabriel, to say something, to say anything. Perhaps the last five seconds they ever would have alone together.
I am not afraid, he said to himself.
I love you," he whispered. "I hope you don't mind.

My parents are going to kill me!"
"That seems rather harsh...

Maybe if I act well enough, I'll come to believe it myself.

Sometimes it is easier to see the light when you stand partly in the darkness.

Fear and realisation of ignorance, strong medicines against stupid pride.

Choosers will be beggars if the begging's not their choosing.

Let this be my final lesson. Everyone and everything has a time to die.

Jenny Lawson

Because you are defined not by life's imperfect moments, but by your reaction to them. And because there is joy in embracing - rather than running from - the utter absurdity of life.

Like my grandmother always said, “Your opinions are valid and important. Unless it’s some stupid bullshit you’re being shitty about, in which case you can just go fuck yourself.

Don’t sabotage yourself. There are plenty of other people willing to do that for free.

Don’t make the same mistakes that everyone else makes. Make wonderful mistakes. Make the kind of mistakes that make people so shocked that they have no other choice but to be a little impressed

A friend is someone who knows where all your bodies are buried. Because they're the ones who helped you put them there. And sometimes, if you're really lucky, they help you dig them back up.

You should just accept who you are, flaws and all, because if you try to be someone you aren't, then eventually some turkey is going to shit all over your well-crafted facade, so you might as well save yourself the effort and enjoy your zombie books.

Atul Gawande

We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. There is science in what we do, yes, but also habit, intuition, and sometimes plain old guessing. The gap between what we know and what we aim for persists. And this gap complicates everything we do.

Better is possible. It does not take genius. It takes diligence. It takes moral clarity. It takes ingenuity. And above all, it takes a willingness to try.

In the end, people don't view their life as merely the average of all its moments—which, after all, is mostly nothing much plus some sleep. For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens. Measurements of people's minute-by-minute levels of pleasure and pain miss this fundamental aspect of human existence. A seemingly happy life maybe empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted to a great cause. We have purposes larger than ourselves.

Erin Hunter

Silverstream: You idiot!!! What are you doing in my territory???
Graystripe:...Drowning?
Silverstream: Can't you do that in your own territory?
Graystripe: Ah, but who would rescue me there?

You cannot live with a paw in each world.

Four will Become Two, Lion and Tiger will Meet in Battle, and Blood will Rule the Forest.

Warriors should suffer their pain silently.

Fire will save the Clan.

Now Darkstripe,' Graypaw hissed to Firepaw under his breath, 'is neither young, nor pretty.

You know Yellowfang, don't you? she was cranky, stubborn, impatient-and the most loyal cat you will ever meet.

Before there is peace, blood will spill blood, and the lake will run red.

Lisa Scottoline

I'm a sociopath. I look normal, but I'm not. I'm smarter, better, and freer, because I'm not bound by rules, law, emotion or regard for you.

I’ve read that one out of twenty-four people is a sociopath, and if you ask me, the other twenty-three of you should be worried.

I can't stand just sitting here not doing anything. You can't solve a problem by remote control.

I don't really like you, but I'm so good at acting as if I do that it's basically the same thing.

How do you tell the psychiatrists from the patients in the hospital?
The patients get better and leave.

Nah. I'm a tough cookie. Except for the cancer, I'm fine.

They don't realize evil lives on their streets.

I fool you. I fool everyone.

You need somebody to stand up for you. You're the little guy, you just don't realize it yet. The Commonwealth has all the aces, and you don't even know you're playing cards.

Your typical suburban mom worries all the time, but she worries about the wrong things.

You should be more paranoid.

Edith Sitwell

Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.

I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.

My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.

I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty...But I am too busy thinking about myself.

I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it.

Eccentricity is not, as some would believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.

Poetry is the deification of reality.

Gail Carriger

I suspect it may be like the difference between a drinker and an alcoholic; the one merely reads books, the other needs books to make it through the day.

How ghastly for her, people actually thinking, with their brains, and right next door. Oh, the travesty of it all.

A vampire, like a lady, never reveals his true age.

I never gossip. I observe. And then relay my observations to practically everyone.

Cats were not, in her experience, an animal with much soul. Prosaic, practical little creatures as a general rule. It would suit her very well to be thought catlike.

You are about as covert as a sledgehammer.

It's no good choosing your first husband from a school for evil geniuses. Much too difficult to kill.

I have died and gone to the land of bad novels.

Mike Norton

Never hold resentments for the person who tells you what you need to hear; count them among your truest, most caring, and valuable friends.

Solitude is the soil in which genius is planted, creativity grows, and legends bloom; faith in oneself is the rain that cultivates a hero to endure the storm, and bare the genesis of a new world, a new forest.

Fall. Stand. Learn. Adapt.

It is not what you can do for your country, but what you can do for all of mankind.

One of the greatest evils is the foolishness of a good man. For the giving man to withhold helping someone in order to first assure personal fortification is not selfish, but to elude needless self-destruction; martyrdom is only practical when the thought is to die, else a good man faces the consequence of digging a hole from which he cannot escape, and truly helps no one in the long run.

Dreams are what guide us, art is what defines us, math is what makes it all possible, and love is what lights our way.

Beethoven said that it's better to hit the wrong note confidently, than hit the right note unconfidently. Never be afraid to be wrong or to embarrass yourself; we are all students in this life, and there is always something more to learn.