The problem with dragons is that everyone uses them. All the time. When that happens,

they become commonplace. A lot of people think you can just throw them into a story and suddenly whatever you're writing is 28% cooler. But that doesn't work. All that does is make dragons into some boring cliche.
Patrick Rothfuss

It is as deadly for a mind to have a system as to have none. Therefore it will have to decide to combine both.
Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

When you are in unrelenting, excruciating and debilitating pain that never goes away for years on end, your life is over.
Bill Walton

I consider the voice a gift from the heavens, and as all the gifts from the heavens, they must be used, but the minute that the heavens call it back then of course I will stop.
Andrea Bocelli

I watched every single Charlie Chaplin film.
Chevy Chase

Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying or meditating or endeavoring something for the public good.
Thomas a Kempis

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Most people of action are inclined to fatalism and most of thought believe in providence.
David Viscott

Every once in while, a person will do something obvious and direct that is no more than it appears to be. I think they do it to throw you off.
Steven Brust

Gemeoss

In the next couple of years, part of every film's process is going to be

to adjust the images. And it'll be to change the color of an actor's tie or change the little smirky thing he's doing with his mouth. Or you can put in more clouds or move the tree a little bit. Robert Zemeckis There's a high school in Camden, New Jersey, I call the Jill Scott School. It's the Camden Creative Arts High School. Those teachers and kids are so passionate about what they do, and 98 percent of the senior class went on to college. Jill Scott I spent a good deal of time going back over my childhood, my midlife, to try to understand who I was. We're supposed to be complete and whole, and you can't be whole if you're trying to be perfect. Doing a life review helped me get over the disease to please. Jane Fonda For over a year I continued to submit mss, and have them rejected - the last few with rejection letters indicated the story was pretty good, but I was American. Nora Roberts Well, you know I have an office, my film offices. So I...

Urban Outfitters - I love it. It's almost like Forever 21, but for, like, the

24- to 25-year-old girl, getting a little bit older. Keke Palmer I'm the kind of person that believes that I would like to be evaluated by my entire career and my entire life, not two words that I would misspeak and then later apologize for. Kirk Cameron I often feel a discomfort, a kind of embarrassment, when I explain elementary-particle physics to laypeople. It all seems so arbitrary - the ridiculous collection of fundamental particles, the lack of pattern to their masses. Leonard Susskind Around age 11 or 12, I started playing jazz bass. From there, I went to electric bass and then guitar, which I kept up for a long time. Joshua Roman Space X's Elon Musk wants to colonize Mars with modules where earthlings can live. My teleporting technology is the number one way those individuals will get new information, new treatments of diseases that will occur on the planet, and new food sources. Craig Venter Brain cells are normally not sensitive to light. So by introdu...

What makes me laugh about politics, sometimes, is it seems like once we get to

a point where our problems are seemingly unsolvable, it's because we're looking through a wrong point of view. If we turn the thing on its head, then maybe we might see it differently. Dave Davies When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle conceived Sherlock Holmes, why didn't he give the famous consulting detective a few more quirks: a wooden leg, say, and an Oedipus complex? Well, Holmes didn't need many physical tics or personality disorders; the very concept of a consulting detective was still fresh and original in 1887. Christopher Fowler The intensity with which Janis Joplin sings, you simply can't find a singer like that. It's almost scary the amount of emotion and energy and passion she puts into her performance. Michael Wadleigh I don't like sequels at all. If the movie's good the first time, why bother? Michael Lehmann The tenet of the separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine. Sharron Angle Back in the day, the album was k...

It's one thing to say you're for the war; it's another thing to send your

kid to war - your daughter or your son. Tim O'Brien When you're still in the broadcast business, you're still trying to reach tens of millions. You're trying to still aim for a broader audience, and I think that's a more difficult task to spread yourself across that audience, connect with them, as opposed to a very, very small, pinpointed audience. Difficult to do. Warren Littlefield I did this film with Russell Crowe called 'The Water Diviner,' which took place just after WWI. It was fascinating because the weapons between WWI and WII were very different. I had to learn how to ride horses in a battle setting. It was important that we rode a certain way. Jai Courtney My teacher told me I'd never amount to anything. I left high school at 15, after one year. But my real teachers were all the people around me. And I was a good listener. Curtis Mayfield I realized that if I don't like something, I can change it. If I don't feel comfortabl...

But, we have had the debate in our country now for a number of years

as to whether or not free trade agreements are good for economic growth and economic opportunity in creating jobs and lifting people out of poverty. Donald Evans Reading is a majority skill but a minority art. Yet nothing can replace the exact, complicated, subtle communion between absent author and entranced, present reader. Julian Barnes I write plays, and I have a musical that's starting to get produced now. That's what I would love to do, but it's so hard. The only reason people are reading my plays and musicals is because I'm in movies. Jesse Eisenberg After reading Eminem's autobiography, which I did because I'm so interested in him as an artist, I respect him a lot. Even though he seems angry and mad, he's had to fight so many demons in his life. Taryn Manning To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body. Mah...

When I started out in independent films in the early '70s, we did everything for

the love of art. It wasn't about money and stardom. That was what we were reacting against. You'd die before you'd be bought. Sissy Spacek The country needs someone with experience and determination to make tough decisions. All the money aside, it is important that Greece restore its reputation. Evangelos Venizelos I rememeber one time we were getting ready to go to South America and everything was packed up and in the car ready to go and I hid and I was crying because I really did not want to go, I wanted to play. I did not want to go. Michael Jackson Fashion is a dream. It's difficult, and there are many aspects of fashion that are very difficult, but if you love it like I do, because I really have a passion, now, for fashion, it's not easy, but nothing is easy in life. Carolina Herrera The answer was that in Burundi, having a clean bill of health has taken on a very particular meaning: unless and until you have paid for your hospital treatment, you si...

It's not good or bad, but closers have changed things. I don't think you are

going to win a World Series without one. Where would the Yankees be without Mariano Rivera? Bruce Sutter The Phoenicians are entitled to be commemorated in history by the side of the Hellenic and Latin nations; but their case affords a fresh proof, and perhaps the strongest proof of all, that the development of national energies in antiquity was of a one-sided character. Theodor Mommsen I started out more interested in drama, but comedy just came naturally to me, and it's become what I'm most known for, even though my sensibilities still lean towards the dramatic for the most part. Paulo Costanzo I am not only the person who wrote and sold a novel while raising a houseful of biological and foster children; I am also the person who wrote a horrific young adult novel that never sold and gave up on a foster child I couldn't handle - an experience that still haunts me. Vanessa Diffenbaugh I have always been good at auditioning, but maybe because I had a good trick a...

If you're not working, over time you're much more likely to develop attitudes and orientations

and behavior patterns that are associated with casual or infrequent work. And then when you open up opportunities for people, you notice that these attitudes, orientations, habits and styles also change. William Julius Wilson I grew up in Somalia, in Saudi Arabia, in Ethiopia, and in Kenya. I came to Europe in 1992, when I was 22, and became a member of Parliament in Holland. Ayaan Hirsi Ali It is one thing to hear about the forest and the river, but an entirely other experience to go there, to see the environment, and to appreciate the natural riches there first-hand. Chris Kilham I think the theater is basically the boot camp for the actor. If you can survive the rigors of an eight-show-a-week schedule and be at your best all the time, you can handle virtually everything because no other craft requires you to get it right every single time. Corey Reynolds We don't have one of those houses where there's a rope that separates the kids' area from the adult area. ...

My passion for gardening may strike some as selfish, or merely an act of resignation

in the face of overwhelming problems that beset the world. It is neither. I have found that each garden is just what Voltaire proposed in Candide: a microcosm of a just and beautiful society. Andrew Weil Arizona, our beautiful state, was built on mining. Copper is huge here, and now uranium. And then we have the federal government coming in, writing all these rules and regulations and telling us that we can't do this and we can't do that. We need concise, clear answers. Jan Brewer Japan, not only a mega-busy city that thrives on electronics and efficiency, actually has an almost sacred appreciation of nature. One must travel outside of Tokyo to truly experience the 'old Japan' and more importantly feel these aspects of Japanese culture. Apolo Ohno I remember New York in the '80s as a place with vacant lots that would eventually give over to nature. Weeds would grow up, squirrels would move in. That entropy is gone now. It's too expensive to let a vacant...

I started singing by default, I think. Because there was a guy in the group

that thought the group wasn't going to ever be anything. And I was getting ready to record, and I'd never recorded my voice. It was always other people that I featured because I thought they did a much better job. Andrae Crouch There are only so many pitches in this old arm, and I don't believe in wasting them throwing to first base. Eddie Plank The subsistence level is only a conventional idea, and conventions change. Arthur Lewis Every major summer blockbuster that is released is essentially a product line being launched across multiple verticals. However, the centerpiece of the product launch is a big, beautiful story whose job is to entertain. Shawn Amos The biographical novel is a true and documented story of one human being's journey across the face of the years, transmuted from the raw material of life into the delight and purity of an authentic art form. Irving Stone Hand washing is the first basic step towards achieving any millennium goals for d...