"Put any two people together and each will seek ways of feeling superior to the other. If a ship went down in the Pacific and a single sailor managed to swim to a desert island, would he be pleased to see, ten minutes later, another sailor emerging from the surf? Quite possibly - but only if the new arrival accepted that the first man was now a landed aristocrat while he himself was an illegal immigrant."

“I suppose you could sum up the religious aspects of my boyhood by saying it was a time of life when I was taught the difference between right and wrong as it specifically applied to Catholicism.”

“I really don't understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years.”

Source : "You’ll Never Get This 21 Minutes Of Your Life Back" by John Cole, www.balloon-juice.com. February 5, 2009.

“As an editor, I read Charlotte Rogan's amazing debut novel, 'The Lifeboat,' when it was still in manuscript. I read it in one night, and I really wanted my company to publish it, but we lost it to another house. It's such a wonderful combination of beautiful writing and suspenseful storytelling.”

“Any life he'd ever heard of, his own included, was burdened with emotions - love, loss, jobs, jealousy, money, death, pain. But if you were Jewish, always there was this extra one, the added pull at your endurance, the one more thing. There was that line in Thoreau about 'quiet desperation' - that was indeed true of most men. But for some men and women, for some fathers and mothers and children, the world still contrived that one extra test, endless and unrelenting.”

Source : Laura Z. Hobson (2011). “Gentleman's Agreement”, p.310, Open Road Media

“For some it is harder to write a novel than to row a bathtub across the North Atlantic.”

Source : James N. Frey (2010). “How to Write a Damn Good Novel: A Step-by-Step No Nonsense Guide to Dramatic Storytelling”, p.151, Macmillan

“Still today, I cannot cross the threshold of a teaching institution without physical symptoms, in my chest and my stomach, of discomfort or anxiety. And yet I have never left school.”

“Prayer TV looks like pay TV to me.”

“If Britons were left to tax themselves, there would be no schools, no hospitals, just a 500-mile-high statue of Diana, Princess of Wales”

Source : "Not amused by Jimmy Carr? Check out these comedians instead" by Hazel Davis, www.theguardian.com. December 29, 2009.