~Daniel Defoe from ROBINSON CRUSOE

"I had more care upon my head now than I had in my silent state of life in the island, where I wanted nothing but what I had, and had nothing but what I wanted."

~Jorge Luis Borges from the short story "BRODIE'S REPORT"

"Philosophically speaking, memory is no less marvelous than prophesying the future; tomorrow is closer to us than the crossing of the Red Sea by the Jews, which, nonetheless, we remember."

~Elbert Hubbard

"The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge."

~We Wrote the Book on Connectors album TURBO HORSE

"Grandma's aren't always this sexy, you know."

~Naomi Shihab Nye from WHAT HAVE YOU LOST?

"The things that cause you friction are the things from which you might make art."

~Jorge Luis Borges from the short story THE ZAHIR

". . . there is nothing less material than money, since any coin . . . is, in all truth, a panoply of possible futures. Money is abstract, I said over and over, money is future time."

~Samuel Johnson

“Ignorance, when voluntary, is criminal, and a man may be properly charged with that evil which he neglected or refused to learn how to prevent.”

~ Jean-Paul Sarte from the play NO EXIT

“One always dies too soon – or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are – your life, and nothing else.”

~ Neil Gaiman from THE SANDMAN, VOL VI: FABLES & REFLECTIONS

"You shouldn't trust the storyteller; only trust the story."

~ Neil Gaiman from THE SANDMAN, VOL VI: FABLES & REFLECTIONS

"Value's in what people think. not in what's real. Value's in dreams, boy."

~Epictetus

“Only the educated are free.”

~ Robert M. Persig from ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE

“This is how it was before they white man came – beautiful lava flows, and scrawny trees and not a beer can anywhere – but now that the white man is here, it looks fake. Maybe the National Park Service should set just one pile of beer cans in the middle of all that lava and then it would come to life. The absence of beer cans is distracting.”

~Gloria Steinem

"Empathy is the most radical of human emotions."

~ Jorge Luis Borges from COLLECTED FICTIONS "Preface to the First Edition”

"I sometimes think that good readers are poets as singular, and as awesome, as great authors themselves."

~Ruldolfo Anaya from BLESS ME, ULTIMA

“’Understanding comes with life, . . . as a man grows he sees life and death, he is happy and sad, he works, plays, meets people – sometimes it takes a lifetime to acquire understanding, because in the end understanding simply means having a sympathy for people.’”

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~ Nathaniel Pitt Langford from THE DISCOVERT OF YELLOWSTONE PARK

"Truly has it been said, that we live to learn how little may be known, and of what we see, how much surpasses comprehension."

~M.T. Anderson from THE ASTONISHING LIFE OF OCTAVIAN NOTHING TRAITOR TO THE NATION, VOLUME ONE: THE POX PARTY

“There is no refreshment more gratifying to the soul than the sight of Nature in her summer finery, before the heat is at its most intense. She is soothing, but not soporific; intoxicating without inebriation.”

~Alan Moore from V FOR VENDETTA

Everybody is special. Everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. Everybody. Everybody has their story to tell.

~William Dement, sleep expert, quoted in Salon.com

“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”

~ Marjane Satrapi from PERSEPOLIS 2: THE STORY OF A RETURN

“When we’re afraid, we lose all sense of analysis and reflection. Our fear paralyzes us. Besides, fear has always been the driving force behind all dictators’ repression.”

~Neil Gaiman THE GRAVEYARD BOOK

"People want to forget the impossible. It makes their world safer."

~Matthew Arnold

"The free thinking of one age is the common sense of the next."

~ Aristotle

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

A Beginning

Ah, to begin a blog, to post to you all, to the world....

I've always loved collecting quotes, but never had a place for them, so here they are. I'll begin by adding the ones I've collected over the years, and I'll slowly add new ones in as I read them. Most will come from books I read, and I'll should have attribution. Please enjoy!