"Never before have humans been so ambitious, have they thought that they could be much more than their parents were."

“I read a ton of nonfiction. I tend to read about a lot of very extreme situations, life-or-death situations. I'm very interested in books about Arctic exploration or about doomed Apollo missions. I tend to read a lot of nonfiction that's sort of hyperbolic and visceral. And then I kind of draw on my own personal experiences and my own sort of generic life experience, and I kind of try to feed my day-to-day reality that I have with sort of high stakes reference points that I read about. They're things everyone can relate to.”

“The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men do not turn aside in their course and pass the judges by.”

“The spitter wasn't hard to hit when you knew a pitcher could throw it legally. But the guys to worry about were the pitchers who sneaked over the illegal spitter after the pitch was outlawed.”

“I can promise you books and conversation and all my heart.”

Source : Gabrielle Zevin (2014). “The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry: A Novel”, p.154, Algonquin Books

“And its very strange, but I think there is something very common - not only in Celtic music - but there is a factor or element in Celtic music that is similar in music that we find in Japan, the United States, Europe, and even China and other Asian countries.”

“He would wake for no reason in the middle of the night, and the memory of the self-absorbed love was revealed to him for what it was: a pitfall of happiness that he despised and desired at the same time, but from which it was impossible to escape.”

“I had a very happy childhood, but I wasn't that happy a child. I liked being alone and creating characters and voices. I think that's when your creativity is developed, when you're young. I liked the world of the imagination because it was an easy place to go to.”

Source : "Rik Mayall: Forever young". Interview with Lynn Barber, www.theguardian.com. December 16, 2000.

“I hope there will be no effort to put up a shaft or any monument of that sort in memory of me or of the other women who have giventhemselves to our work. The best kind of a memorial would be a school where girls could be taught everything useful that would help them to earn an honorable livelihood; where they could learn to do anything they were capable of, just as boys can. I would like to have lived to see such a school as that in every great city of the United States.”