"You’ve got to have a little more confidence in us than that. It’s insulting."

“We're so quick to cut away pieces of ourselves to suit a particular relationship, a job, a circle of friends, incessantly editing who we are until we fit in.”

Source : Charles De Lint (2000). “Triskell Tales: Twenty-two Years of Chapbooks”, Subterranean

“Wherever a people have grown savage in arms so that human laws have no longer any place among it, the only powerful means of reducing it is religion.”

“The writer must be universal in sympathy and an outcast by nature: only then can he see clearly.”

Source : Flaubert's Parrot (1984) ch. 10

“I'm going to preach there was no Fall because there was nothing to fall from, and no Redemption because there was no Fall, and no Judgment because there wasn't the first two. Nothing matters but that Jesus was a liar.”

“I remember those days right after I graduated from college. All I had to do was wake up in the morning and think about writing songs. It's not like that anymore, needless to say.”

“Oh God. valentine's Day tomorrow. Why? Why? Why is (the) entire world geared to make people not involved in romance feel stupid when everyone knows romance does not work anyway. Look at (the) royal family. Look at Mum and Dad.”

“Many people in Europe and the U.S. dispute the thesis that we are living through a clash of civilisations between Islam and the west. But a radical minority of Muslims firmly believes that Islam is under siege, and is committed to winning the holy war it has declared against the West.”

“I'm telling you, the gorgeous of the world can actually look pretty intimidating when they scowl. Imagine a snow-white swan with a scary tattoo holding a chain saw. There's just no way to really prepare for that.”

Source : Jim Benton (2013). “Dear Dumb Diary #11: Okay, So Maybe I Do Have Superpowers”, p.53, Scholastic