"No one can drive us crazy unless we give them the keys."

“Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.”

“I was born with no money. So when people talk about Bow Wow being rich his whole life, I don't know where they get that.”

“My agent came to me with a deal from another publisher and I signed a deal and got the advance with no idea of what I was going to do. I probably procrastinated for almost a year, but we had meetings and I was basically going to spoof "Take Ivy," but then it kind of turned into something else. I wanted it to be a book of all the things that made me who I am, like Brooks Brothers, Hot Wheels, "The Andy Griffith Show" and G.I. Joes. I couldn't sit still and do it, so my agent had to come to my house and force me to do it.”

“I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.”

“Since time is the one immaterial object which we cannot influence - neither speed up nor slow down, add to nor diminish - it is an imponderably valuable gift. Each of us has a few minutes a day or a few hours a week which we could donate to an old folks home or a children's hospital ward. The elderly whose pillows we plump or whose water pitchers we refill may or may not thank us for our gift, but the gift is upholding the foundation of the universe.”

“Strike hard and fast and do not separate.”

“No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.”

Source : Ann Dumas, Edgar Degas (1996). “Degas As a Collector”

“You start reading C.S. Lewis, then you’re reading G.K. Chesterton, then you’re a Catholic.”

Source : "Ross Douthat’s Fantasy World". Interview with Mark Oppenheimer, www.motherjones.com. January 2010.