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I had never gone to a doctor in my adult life, feeling instinctively that doctors meant either cutting or, just as bad, diet.

Carson McCullers

Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.

Roland Barthes

Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories.

John Wilmot

We are traveling with tremendous speed toward a star in the Milky Way. A great repose is visible on the face of the Earth. My heart’s a little fast. Otherwise everything’s fine.

Bertolt Brecht

If you’re alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you’re quiet, you’re not living.

Mel Brooks

Ancient peoples invented rites of passage in part to break the spell of childhood and move the initiate from the mother’s lap to the lap of the world. To this day, a person must dismantle the spell of childhood or fail to find their place in life.

Michael Meade

When a great moment knocks on the door of your life, it is often no louder than the beating of your heart, and it is easy to miss it.

Boris Pasternak

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.

Johnny Carson

Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.

W.H. Auden

Many people hear voices when no one is there. Some of them are called “mad” and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called “writers” and they do pretty much the same thing.

Meg Chittenden