The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.

Jane Austen

Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.

Barbara Kingsolver

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a nam

William Shakespeare (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”

Anne Lamott

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”

Mark Twain