You draw a line and you know at once whether it's a good line or a bad line. But you write a line and it seems true and then you read it again later.
~~~John Fowles The Collector

Aunt Trantner had begun by making the best of things for herself, and ended by making the best of them for the rest of the world as well.
~~~John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman

You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it . . . fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf - your book, the romanticized autobiography.
~~~John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman

"You've a good heart," she told him. "Sometimes that's enough to see you safe wherever you go." Then she shook her head. "But mostly, it's not."
~~~Neil Gaiman Neverwhere

"What a refreshing mind you have, young man," he said. "There really is nothing quite like total ignorance, is there?"
~~~Neil Gaiman Neverwhere

We play very dangerous games with life and no one knows our rules.
~~~Parke Godwin

Poor John -- who says poor John? Don't everybody sob at once. My God, if I went up in flames, there's not a living soul who'd pee on me to put the fire out.
~~~James Goldman The Lion in Winter

Believe I love you, for I do. Believe that I am your forever, for I am. Believe in my contentment and the joy you give me and believe --
~~~James Goldman The Lion in Winter

You're more beautiful than ever. There is much that is beautiful in evil when it's absolutely pure. You are so foul you're fair.
~~~James Goldman The Lion in Winter

...you say in several places that I am dead. As I sit here and watch my fingers form this note, I am forced to believe you are in error.
I am old, but alive. Perhaps as you age, you will find the two are not mutually exclusive.
~~~William Goldman The Silent Gondolier

But at night, especially when the moon is full and the soft illumination reflects off the water and onto the palaces - I don't know how to describe it so I won't, but if you died and in your will you asked for your ashes to be spread gently on the Grand Canal at midnight with a full moon, everyone would know this about you - you loved and understood beauty.
~~~William Goldman The Silent Gondolier

How can the removal of beauty from a world so lacking in beauty be anything but tragic?
That is what follows.
And can the loss of beauty be anything but bad?
That is for you to decide.
~~~William Goldman The Silent Gondolier

A girl and a boy bump - surely an accident.
A girl and a boy bump and her handkerchief drops - surely another accident.
But when a girl gives a boy a dead squid - that had to mean something.
~~~William Goldman The Silent Gondolier

There are many bad things about the human race. But there are many good things too. And one of the best is this -- dreams, great dreams, die hard . . . .
~~~William Goldman The Silent Gondolier

Whe someone special happens, he rubs off on everybody.
~~~William Goldman The Silent Gondolier

This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.
~~~William Goldman The Princess Bride

"Life is pain," his mother said. "Anybody that says different is selling something."
~~~William Goldman The Princess Bride

"No more shooting from anyone. Or I am going to get seriously cranky with everyone. Suddenly, and violently and all over the place." -John Taylor
~~~Simon R. Green Something From the Nightside

When I started out I had a dream, a dream of helping people who had nowhere else to turn; but dreams don't last. They can't compete with reality.
~~~Simon R. Green Something From the Nightside

Sometimes humor is all we have to say the things that can't be said.
~~~Simon R. Green Agents of Light and Darkness

In olden times when wishing still helped one, there lived a King whose daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, which has seen so much, was astonished whenever it shone in her face.
~~~The Brothers Grimm

I was grateful the trouble people hadn't granted my wish to undo the pregnancy -- perhaps they were wiser than I, giving mme what I needed instead of what I asked for.
~~~Ursula Hegi Salt Dancers

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.
~~~Aldous Huxley

I think God made women foolish so that she might be a suitable companion to man.
~~~Helen Keller

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