"Men are kids at heart. They want to be nourished and pet like a dog."

“No longer can we consider what the artist does to be a self-contained activity, mysteriously inspired from above, unrelated and unrelatable to other human activities. Instead, we recognize the exalted kind of seeing that leads to the creation of great art as an outgrowth of the humbler and more common activity of the eyes in everyday life. Just as the prosaic search for information is "artistic" because it involves giving and finding shape and meaning, so the artist's conceiving is an instrument of life, a refined way of understanding who and where we are.”

Source : Rudolf Arnheim (2004). “Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye”, p.5, Univ of California Press

“Relationships based on obligation lack dignity.”

“It is not possible in this culture today to hold up to public pillory and ridicule any group - whether blacks, American Indians, women, homosexuals, Poles, or any of a number of other groups that have been discriminated against in the past. However, the one group you can hold up to public mockery and pillory without fear of reprisal is evangelical Christians.”

“Write 100 things that you love about your partner. It's another way of keeping yourself in check. It's hard to do.”

“I grew up in the theater. I began my career at 3. That was the first time I stepped onto a provisional stage.”

“Words easy to be understood do often hit the mark, when high and learned ones do only pierce the air.”

“Essentially I see the new atheism as largely part of the crisis of the left. Having failed to carry through its agenda in relation to political and economic life it's rounding on religion, ignoring the fact that, in some key respects, many believers are likely to share leftist aspirations.”

Source : "Towards hope". Interview with Richard Marshall, www.3ammagazine.com. July 18, 2014.

“I was eight years old when my father was murdered. It is almost impossible to describe the pain of losing a parent to a senseless murder ... But even as a child, one thing was clear to me: I didn't want the killer, in turn, to be killed. I remember lying in bed and praying, Please, God. Please don't take his life, too. I saw nothing that could be accomplished in the loss of one life being answered with the loss of another.”

Source : Margaret George (2011). “The Memoirs of Cleopatra”, p.683, Pan Macmillan