Marion Zimmer Bradley

Remain true to yourself, child. If you know your own heart, you will always have one friend who does not lie.

I know all about endings. It is beginnings that elude me.

The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.

There is no such thing as a true tale. Truth has many faces and the truth is like to the old road to Avalon; it depends on your own will, and your own thoughts, whither the road will take you.

Love is the only prayer I know.

I never left you; I never will leave you. While life lasts, and beyond, I am here.

By what men think, we create the world around us, daily new.

And I must believe that man has the power to know the right, to choose between good and evil and know that his choice has made a difference . . .

Brian Selznick

I address you all tonight for who you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.

Maybe we are all cabinets of wonders.

Ben wished the world was organized by the Dewey decimal system. That way you'd be able to find whatever you were looking for.

I like to imagine that the world is one big machine. You know, machines never have any extra parts. They have the exact number and type of parts they need. So I figure if the entire world is a big machine, I have to be here for some reason. And that means you have to be here for some reason, too.

Time can play all sorts of tricks on you. In the blink of an eye, babies appear in carriages, coffins disappear into the ground, wars are won and lost, and children transform, like butterflies, into adults.

If you've ever wondered where your dreams come from when you go to sleep at night, just look around. This is where they are made.

Maybe that's why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn't able to do what it was meant to do...Maybe it's the same with people," Hugo continued. "If you lose your purpose...it's like your broken.

Anita Desai

Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.

Isn't it strange how life won't flow, like a river, but moves in jumps, as if it were held back by locks that are opened now and then to let it jump forwards in a kind of flood?

. . . the moon that hung over the garden like some great priceless pearl, flawed and blemished with grey shadowy ridges as only a very great beauty can risk being.

Usually a feeling of disappointment follows the book, because what I hoped to write is not what I actually accomplished. However, it becomes a motivation to write the next book.

Reality is merely one-tenth visible section of the iceberg that one sees above the surface of the ocean - art remaining nine-tenths of it that lies below the surface. That is why it is more near Truth than Reality itself. Art does not merely reflect Reality - it enlarges it.

L. M. Montgomery

Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?

It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.

Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think. It's splendid to find out there are so many of them in the world.

I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.

True friends are always together in spirit. 

Well, we all make mistakes, dear, so just put it behind you. We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us.

I am simply a 'book drunkard.' Books have the same irresistible temptation for me that liquor has for its devotee. I cannot withstand them.

Life is worth living as long as there's a laugh in it.

My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.

Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.

People laugh at me because I use big words. But if you have big ideas, you have to use big words to express them, haven't you?

Clare Boothe Luce

Money can't buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you're being miserable.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Because I am a woman, I must make unusual efforts to succeed. If I fail, no one will say, 'She doesn't have what it takes.' They will say, 'Women don't have what it takes.'

Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there.

If God had wanted us to think with our wombs, why did he give us a brain?

Courage is the ladder on which all other virtues mount.

A man has only one escape from his old self — to see a different self in the mirror of some woman's eyes.

No good deed goes unpunished.

There are no hopeless situations; there are only people who have grown hopeless about then.

W. P. Kinsella

Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.

Baseball is the most perfect of games, solid, true, pure and precious as diamonds. If only life were so simple. Within the baselines anything can happen. Tides can reverse; oceans can open. That's why they say, "the game is never over until the last man is out." Colors can change, lives can alter, anything is possible in this gentle, flawless, loving game.

Hardly anybody recognizes the most significant moments of their life at the time they happen.

She had fouled off of the curves that life had thrown at her.

The kind of people I absolutely cannot tolerate are those who never let you forget they are religious. It seems to me that a truly religious person would let his life be example enough, would not let his religion interfere with being a human being, and would not be so insecure as to have to fawn publicly before his gods.

George Burns

Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.

Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age. 

You can't help getting older, but you don't have to get old.

When I was a boy the Dead Sea was only sick.

I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.

Sincerity - if you can fake that, you've got it made.

I'd rather be a failure at something I enjoy than a success at something I hate.

Don't stay in bed, unless you can make money in bed.

It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth.

The secret of a good sermon is to have a good beginning and a good ending; and to have the two as close together as possible.

I was brought up to respect my elders, so now I don't have to respect anybody.

I look to the future because that's where I'm going to spend the rest of my life.

Someone who makes you laugh is a comedian. Someone who makes you think and then laugh is a humorist. 

Paulo Freire

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.

Leaders who do not act dialogically, but insist on imposing their decisions, do not organize the people--they manipulate them. They do not liberate, nor are they liberated: they oppress.

If the structure does not permit dialogue the structure must be changed.

Looking at the past must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who they are so that they can more wisely build the future.

The oppressors do not favor promoting the community as a whole, but rather selected leaders.

One cannot expect positive results from an educational or political action program which fails to respect the particular view of the world held by the people. Such a program constitutes cultural invasion, good intentions notwithstanding.

No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.

Any situation in which some men prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence;… to alienate humans from their own decision making is to change them into objects.

The teacher is of course an artist, but being an artist does not mean that he or she can make the profile, can shape the students. What the educator does in teaching is to make it possible for the students to become themselves.

Brandon Mull

Smart people learn from their mistakes. But the real sharp ones learn from the mistakes of others.

We humans are conflicted beings. Our beliefs don't always harmonize with our instincts, and our behavior doesn't always reflect our beliefs. ... We wage war between the person we are and the person we hope to become.

Choices determine character.

An unread book does nobody any good. Stories happen in the mind of a reader, not among symbols printed on a page.

When jumping is the sole option, you jump, and try to make it work.

Excruciating agony makes me cranky.

We all posses different gifts and abilities. How we use those gifts determines who we are.

Luck has a way of evaporating when you lean on it.

Running toward danger is foolhardy. ... But so is closing your eyes to it. Many perils become less dangerous once you understand their potential hazards.

The curse of mortality. You spend the first portion of your life learning, growing stronger, more capable. And then, through no fault of your own, your body begins to fail. You regress. Strong limbs become feeble, keen senses grow dull, hardy constitutions deteriorate. Beauty withers. Organs quit. You remember yourself in your prime, and wonder where that person went. As your wisdom and experience are peaking, your traitorous body becomes a prison.

Susan Cain

Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.

There's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.

Spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you're supposed to.

Or at school you might have been prodded to come “out of your shell”—that noxious expression which fails to appreciate that some animals naturally carry shelter everywhere they go, and that some humans are just the same.

The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. For some, it's a Broadway spotlight; for others, a lamplit desk. Use your natural powers -- of persistence, concentration, and insight -- to do work you love and work that matters. Solve problems. make art, think deeply.

Solitude matters, and for some people, it's the air they breathe.

The purpose of school should be to prepare kids for the rest of their lives, but too often what kids need to be prepared for is surviving the school day itself.

We have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionally.