Life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language.
-- Tom Stoppard

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
-- G. Bernard Shaw

A good story should provoke discussion, debate, argument...and the occasional bar fight.
-- J. Michael Strazynski

Here's how to become a great artist. First, get miserable. Misery drives you to become a great artist, but the art does nothing for your misery, which drives you to drugs, which makes you a lousy artist.
-- House M.D.

Humans? They're long gone. Vanished. Extinct. They only exist in stories.
-- Ferngully

Anton Chekov, who was a doctor, said, "Medicine is my wife; writing is my mistress."

Se non e vero, e ben trovato. (Even if it’s not true, it’s a good story.)
-- Italian Proverb

The recipe for becoming a good novelist is easy to give, but to carry it out presupposes qualities one is accustomed to overlook. One has only to make a hundred or so sketches for novels, none longer than two pages but of such distinctness that every word in them is necessary. One should write down anecdotes every day until one has learnt how to give them the most pregnant and effective form; one should be tireless in collecting and describing human types and characters; one should above all relate things to others and listen to others relate, keeping one's eyes and ears open for the effect produced on those present, one should travel like a landscape painter or costume designer. One should, finally, reflect on the motives of human actions, disdain no signpost for instruction about them and be a collector of these things by day and night. One should continue in this many-sided exercise for some ten years; what is then created in the workshop will be fit to go out into the world.
-- Nietzsche

The thief. Once committed beyond a certain point he should not worry himself too much. Thieving is God's message to him. Let him try and be a good thief.
-- Samuel Butler

What is written without effort is generally read without pleasure.
-- Samuel Johnson

Same story, different versions, and all are true.
-- POTC: Dead Man's Chest

I am a humble artist
moulding my earthly clod,
adding my labour to nature's,
simply assisting God.
-- Piet Hein

Every archaeologist knows in his heart why he digs. He digs, in pity and humility, that the dead may live again, that what is past may not be forever lost, that something may be salvaged from the wrack of the ages.
-- From "The Testimony of the Spade"

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
-- Francis Bacon

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.
-- Seneca epistles 88 45

When asked how she acquired her knowledge of science, Octavia Butler replied, "I read."

Imagination is more important than information.
-- Albert Einstein