Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this.

Agatha Christie

Companionship is not a thing one needs every day--it is a thing that grows upon one, and sometimes as destroying as ivy growing round you.

Agatha Christie on writing

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness--to save oneself trouble.

There's no agony like [getting started]. You sit in a room, biting pencils, looking at a typewriter, walking about, or casting yourself down on a sofa, feeling you want to cry your head off.

The best time to plan a book is while you're doing the dishes.

T. E. Lawrence

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Everybody has his own hole to climb out of.