"For a moment, nothing happened. Then, after a second or so, nothing continued to happen." - Douglas Adams

"Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child." - Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

"Ask a talented person how they do what they do and they can rarely explain it - because talent is typically unconscious." - Unknown

"Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river that carries me away, but I am the river; it is a tiger that mangles me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire that consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, alas, is real; I, alas, am Borges." - Jorge Luis Borges

"Every man of genius is considerably helped by being dead." - Robert Lynd (1879-1949)

"All those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand." - Kurt Vonnegut

"You become a writer because you need to become a writer - nothing else." - Grace Paley

"What is history but a fable agreed upon?" - Napoleon

"Never assume the obvious is true." - William Safire

"ACQUAINTANCE: a person whom we know well enough to borrow from, but not well enough to lend to." - Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914)

"We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no big ones." - Francois Duc de La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680)

"It is only in literature that coincidences seem unnatural." - Robert Lynd (1879-1949)

"Write without pay until somebody offers to pay." - Mark Twain

"You can't be careful on a skateboard, man." - Stephen King

"And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." - Anais Nin

"The three-dimensional space in which we live can be completely described by its two-dimensional boundary. Thus, the third dimension is not independent of the other two, and the world is, in a sense, a hologram." -Leonard Susskind, of Stanford University, and Gerard 't Hooft, University of Utrecht