sophiawestern

If you were to ask me if I'd ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I'd have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.

- Luis Buñuel

"I love you" is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say it we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them.

- Jeanette Winterson

Although I have no important business to do, I am nonetheless continually occupied. I spend my life in inquiry. In the evening I write down what I have noticed, what I have seen or heard, during the day. Everything interests me, everything surprises me: I am like a child, whose organs are still delicate, so that even the most trivial things make an impression on them.

- Montesquieu

After delivering a lecture on the solar system, philospher-psychologist William James was approached by an elderly lady who claimed she had a theory superior to the one described by him.

"We don't live on a ball rotating around the sun," she said. "We live on a crust of earth on the back of a giant turtle."

Not wishing to demolish this absurd argument with the massive scientific evidence at his command, James decided to dissuage his opponent gently.

"If your theory is correct, madam, what does this turtle stand on?"

"You're a very clever man, Mr. James, and that's a good question, but I can answer that. The first turtle stands on the back of a second, larger turtle."

"But what does this second turtle stand one?" James asked patiently.

The old lady crowed triumphantly. "It's no use, Mr. James - it's turtles all the way down."

- B. Nietschmann

Your destiny does not write itself.

- Anonymous

It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.

- Neil Gaiman

I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.

- Maya Angelou