"If you are advocating full retirement benefits starting at 60, my reaction is the system is already 31 percent underfinanced and can not afford what it's now doing, let alone such a policy change."

“The welfare of our children is our main concern and their best interests are our first priority”

“A too-swift and easy coalition victory may substantially increase the risk of future wars.”

Source : "War's biggest puzzle will only be solved when Baghdad falls". www.smh.com.au. April 7, 2003.

“A person cannot love a plant after he has pruned it, then he has either done a poor job or is devoid of emotion.”

Source : Liberty Hyde Bailey (1925). “The Pruning-manual: Being the 18th Ed., Rev. and Reset, of the Pruning-book which was First Published in 1898”

“But my heart is always propped up in a field on its tripod, ready for the next arrow.”

Source : Billy Collins (2012). “Nine Horses”, p.18, Pan Macmillan

“The mainstream has lost its way. Crime fiction is an objective, realistic genre because it's about the real world, real bodies really being killed by somebody. And this involves the investigator in trying to understand the society that the person lived in.”

Source : FaceBook post by Michael Dibdin from Nov 27, 2011

“When I'm saying hysteria, I'm referring to Freud, because all the women were coming to him with symptoms and seeking help, and he just called it hysteria.”

“Sentir mon CÅ“ur is a privilege only granted to the exceptional man the one who has the ability to find words that exactly (or, to himself, convincingly) express his feelings. ... The value of words help to define the feeling itself. ... The common failure is to allow habitual words and phrases, flowing spontaneously from the memory, to determine and deform the feelings.”

“I wake up saying, I'm still alive; a miracle. And so I keep on pushing.”