The Age Quotes

At the age of fourteen I discovered writing as an escape from a world of reality in which I felt acutely uncomfortable. ~ Tennessee Williams

We must learn to love ourselves less and the earth more. This will not be an easy task for we live in the age of nonsense. Bombarded with thousands of messages each day that proclaim how to be loved instead of how to be loving, we have learned to love objects instead of processes. ~ Steve Van Matre

I think Serena Williams is the best tennis player of this generation, if not the best ever. It is amazing for her to be playing as well as she is at the age of 31. ~ Samantha Stosur

It was becoming more and more evident that Salem was a town that celebrated individuality, a real live-and-let-live kind of place. Melody felt a gut punch of regret. Her old nose would have fit in here.
"Look!" She pointed at the multicolored car whizzing by. Its black door were from a Mercedes coupe, the white hood from a BMW; the silver trunk was Jaguar, the red convertible top was Lexus, the whitewall tires were Bentley, the sound system was Bose, and the music was classical. A hood ornament from each model dangled from the rear view mirror. Its license plate appropriately read MUTT.
"That car looks like a moving Benton ad."
"Or a pileup on Rodeo drive." Candace snapped a picture with her iPhone and e-mailed to her friends back home. They responded instantly with a shot of what they were doing. It must have involved the mall because Candace picked up her pace and began asking anyone under the age of fifty where the cool people hung out. ~ Lisi Harrison

If you could start children right from the beginning with this thought, you'd see the effect it has on their lives. In fact, I did this with my own children. Again and again, I told them there was a reason why they were here, and they had to find out what that reason was for themselves. From the age of four years, they heard this. I also taught them to meditate when they were about the same age, and I told them, "I never, ever want you to worry about making a living. If you're unable to make a living when you grow up, I'll provide for you, so don't worry about that. I don't want you to focus on doing well in school. I don't want you to focus on getting the best grades or going to the best colleges. What I really want you to focus on is asking yourself how you can serve humanity, and asking yourself what your unique talents are. Because you have a unique talent that no one else has, and you have a special way of expressing that talent, and no one else has it. ~ Deepak Chopra

I love having first-time experiences. When you're past the age of 20 or so, there are less and less first-time experiences. ~ Justine Bateman

The coercive effect of this policy is particularly pronounced in the school setting given the age and impressionability of schoolchildren, and their understanding that they are required to adhere to the norms set by their school, their teacher, and their fellow students. ~ Alfred Goodwin

Focus on quality and ease of movement, not on the age a milestone is accomplished. ~ Magda Gerber

Those who know the joys and miseries of celebrities when they have passed the age of forty know how to defend themselves. ~ Sarah Bernhardt

A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet. One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration is the image of the earth finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable, bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time. ~ Carl Sagan

O Lord, I wish to promote thy holy religion which is dreadfully neglected. I am desirous to save young persons from the vices of the age. ~ Sarah Trimmer

I've had watermelon hair where I had pink with green tips. From the age of 13 to about 19 or 20, I never had my real hair color. ~ Natalia Tena

I have always been English, ever since I emigrated from England and since the kids in Canada beat me up at the age of twelve for having an East London Cockney accent. I thank them for the cockney taunts because the beatings turned me on to boxing. But on a serious note Canada has been kind to me. ~ Lennox Lewis

When I became 21, I decided that nobody learned anything about politics after the age of 21. ~ Grover Norquist

Last, but by no means least, courage of one's convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle_ the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other. ~ Douglas MacArthur

My mother got pregnant with me at the age of fifteen. This was '64, and unheard of at that time. ~ Dr. Dre

It's the age-old concept of like attracts like, or the law of attraction. You get back what you put out, so you might as well think positively, focus on visualizing what you want instead of getting distracted by what you don't want, and send the universe your good intentions so that it can send them right back. ~ Sophia Amoruso

It is true that I entered parliament at the age of 23, and have now been representing the people of my constituency for over twenty years. ~ Charles Kennedy

At the age of fifty-six Eleanor Stoddard was still a beautiful woman. She owned three hotels in France and another two in England. From nothing at all, she had built an empire. Eleanor had it all. Her one weakness was the young man sleeping beside her. ~ Barbara Taylor Bradford

I was put under contract. A major studio. I got nominated for an Academy Award. Isn't that ridiculous? I mean, at the age of 18! ~ Angela Lansbury

I didn't decide to become a musician until the age of 15, which is quite late. ~ Evelyn Glennie

soon as I was old enough, I found myself a holiday job as errand boy to earn some money. My first job was probably at the age of 9 or 10, delivering papers before attending school. I remember working for Smith's at the railway station in Bognor. We would arrive about 6:30am, unload the papers from the train when it arrived, take them to the book stall for sorting and each collect our own round in a large newspaper sack. ~ Walter Edney

An illicit love affair seems sweetly old-fashioned in the age of one night stands and orgies. ~ Mason Cooley

One of the middle ones in the flock, I was born on July 24, 1857, in the small Jutland town of Fredericia. In 1863, my father was transferred to Randers, another Jutland town, where a year later, at the age of six, I experienced the invasion of the allied Prussian and Austrian armies. ~ Henrik Pontoppidan

By the age of nine or ten, I knew that I loved history and writing. It got hold of me and never turned loose. ~ Hampton Sides

Sorel's basic character flaws had all cemented by the age of fifteen, a fact which further elicited my sympathy. To have all the building blocks of your life in place by that age was, by any standard, a tragedy. It was as good as sealing yourself into a dungeon. Walled in, with nowhere to go but your own doom.
Walls.
A world completely surrounded by walls. ~ Haruki Murakami

Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen. ~ Willa Cather

When children reach the age of sixteen, they discover the meaning of life: car keys. ~ Erma Bombeck

I am absent altogether too much to be a suitable instructor for a law-student. When a man has reached the age that Mr. Widner has,and has already been doing for himself, my judgment is, that he reads the books for himself without an instructor. That is precisely the way I came to the law. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Yet there was one problem: at the age of nine-and-ten, Laenor preferred the company of squires of his own age, and was said never to have known a woman intimately, nor to have any bastards. But to this, Grand Maester Mellos was said to have remarked, What of it? I am not fond of fish, but when fish is served, I eat it. ~ George R R Martin

I'm still at the age where I'm constantly seeking approval of people I have respect for. ~ Eliot Paulina Sumner

's one of the perversities of the age: I'm embarrassed by its success, but I'm happy it's selling. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Therein lies the social significance of art: It is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is more lacking. The unsatisfied yearning of the artist reaches back to the primordial image in the unconscious, which is best fitted to compensate the inadequacy and one-sidedness of the present. The artist seizes on this image and, in raising it from deepest unconsciousness, he brings it into relation with conscious values, thereby transforming it until it can be accepted by the minds of his contemporaries according to their powers. ~ Carl Jung

The coming nanometer age can, therefore, also be called the age of interdisciplinarity. ~ Heinrich Rohrer

The Ballad of Lucy Jordan
The morning sun touched lightly on the eyes of Lucy Jordan
In a white suburban bedroom in a white suburban town
As she lay there 'neath the covers dreaming of a thousand lovers
Till the world turned to orange and the room went spinning round.

At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never
Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair.
So she let the phone keep ringing and she sat there softly singing
Little nursery rhymes she'd memorised in her daddy's easy chair.

Her husband, he's off to work and the kids are off to school,
And there are, oh, so many ways for her to spend the day.
She could clean the house for hours or rearrange the flowers
Or run naked through the shady street screaming all the way.

At the age of thirty-seven she realised she'd never
Ride through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair
So she let the phone keep ringing as she sat there softly singing
Pretty nursery rhymes she'd memorised in her daddy's easy chair.

The evening sun touched gently on the eyes of Lucy Jordan
On the roof top where she climbed when all the laughter grew too loud
And she bowed and curtsied to the man who reached and offered her his hand,
And he led her down to the long white car that waited past the crowd.

At the age of thirty-seven she knew she'd found forever
As she rode along t ~ Marianne Faithfull

The 19th century became the age of the museum. Objects were scrambled for, specimens seized, and friezes and antiques grasped. ~ Kate Williams

Religion -Not interested if .......it would be a "choice-based" on study at the age of 18. Further acceptance of God prevails upon de-clutter in it. And guess what, the whole religion would have gone minority!! ~ Praveen Chenna

We were nearly one of the last to realize that in the age of
information science the most expensive asset is knowledge. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev

Thus, it does not seem clear (to us) that there is truly a unified research program here, under the name of materialism. The apparent consensus could be something of a mirage, with the only thing holding it together being a denial of the Soul Hypothesis. If so, it begins to look more like a shared assumption than a shared discovery. And of course there can be consensuses based on fashion and the spirit of the age, as well as consensuses based on observation and reason. Even scientists must always be on guard to make sure they are part of the latter rather than the former. The honorable mantle of the scientist conveys no inherent infallibility in this regard. ~ Mark C. Baker

I've reached the age where anyone who lets me talk seems like an old By listening to my memories, you have become part of them. ~ Margaret Millar

If you want to be President, decide it at the age of five, and then live accordingly. ~ Helen Thomas

Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from drudgery but where human judgment abdicates. The smoothest machine-made product of the age is the organization man, for even the best organizing principle tends to corrupt, and the mechanical principle corrupts absolutely. ~ Jacques Barzun

The first language humans had was gestures. There was nothing primitive about this language that flowed from people's hands, nothing we say now that could not be said in the endless array of movements possible with the fine bones of the fingers and wrists. The gestures were complex and subtle, involving a delicacy of motion that has since been lost completely.

During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for I love you or I feel serious. When a hand was used to shield one's face when frightened by a loud noise something was being said, and when fingers were used to pick up what someone else had dropped something was being said; and even when the hands were at rest, that, too, was saying something. Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one's lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for Now I realize I was wrong to love you. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because people knew how easily they could happen, because th ~ Nicole Krauss

When I was playing soccer at the age of 14, the first thing we'd do before going out onto the field would be to climb up on one another's thighs and massage the legs; it was a regular thing. None of us had a thought of being gay, absolutely not, and it's the same with most bodybuilders. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

There are signs that the age of petroleum has passed its zenith. Adjusted for inflation, a barrel of crude oil now sells for three times its long-run average. The large western oil companies, which cartellised the industry for much of the 20th century, are now selling more oil than they find, and are thus in the throes of liquidation. ~ James Buchan

Journalism only tells us what men are doing; it is fiction that tells us what they are thinking, and still more what they are feeling. If a new scientific theory finds the soul of a man in his dreams, at least it ought not to leave out his day-dreams. And all fiction is only a diary of day-dreams instead of days. And this profound preoccupation of men's minds with certain things always eventually has an effect even on the external expression of the age. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Now we are living in the age of comics as air ~ Osamu Tezuka

A woman, as much as a man, is responsible by the age of forty for the character of her face. But women, obeying the biological imperative, strive harder to preserve a youthful appearance (the reproductive look) and lose it sooner. ~ Edward Abbey

I've told youngsters not to write their autobiographical novel at the age of twenty-one; to save it for the time when they're fifty-one or sixty-one. They should write other novels first, to learn their craft; they shouldn't cut their teeth on the valuable material of childhood because they'll never have better material, ever, to work with. ~ Laura Z. Hobson

Considering myself called of my God to instruct the ignorant, comfort the sorrowful, confirm the weak, and rebuke the proud; by tongue and lively voice in these corrupt days rather than to compose books for the age to come, seeing that so much is written, and yet so little well observed, I decree to contain myself within the bounds of that vocation whereunto I found myself especially called. ~ John Knox

Above all, creators remain drawn to the age-old paradoxes that philosophy grapples with [and] ... that art occasionally resolves ... the problem of the one and the many; unity and variety; determinism and freedom; mechanism and vitalism; good and evil; time and eternity; the plenum and the void; moral absolutism and relativism ... These are the basic problems of human existence, and as far as we possibly can we arrange things to forget them. ~ Frank Barron

I read somewhere that a man should tell the story of his life at the age of forty, and this deadline is fast approaching as I write these lines, only a few short weeks remain before this ominous birthday arrives. ~ Juan Gabriel Vasquez

I was raised as a Baptist in the Bible Belt of the South. Until the age of 37, I had never heard anyone teach or preach about the baptism of the Holy Ghost. Oh yes, I had heard those scriptures read, more aptly read over, and had read over them myself, but I had never heard anyone try to explain this amazing experience or even give it any credence. ~ Kimberly Eady

He who marries the spirit of the age soon becomes a widower. ~ Helen Keller

Two diametrically opposed points of view concerning religion in the West are to bee seen among Muslims. Some consider all Westerners to be Christians, with the small Jewish minority being of course an exception, and often refer to Westerners as "those Christians" as if the West were of the Middle Ages when the Crusades were carried out and when Western civilization lived in what has been called the Age of Faith. Another group of Muslims hold the opposite view that all Westerners are materialists or agnostics and skeptics and in fact there is no religion among the Westerners. Now it is essential to insist that both of these views are false. ~ Seyyed Hossein Nasr

A Conference Board survey released in January of 2010 found that only 45 percent of workers surveyed were happy at their jobs, the lowest in 22 years of polling.2 Depression rates today are ten times higher than they were in 1960.3 Every year the age threshold of unhappiness sinks lower, not just at universities but across the nation. Fifty years ago, the mean onset age of depression was 29.5 years old. Today, it is almost exactly half that: 14.5 years old. ~ Shawn Achor

By the age of fifty, you have made yourself what you are, and if it is good, it is better than your youth. ~ Marya Mannes

There is no self-knowledge but an historical one. No one knows what he himself is who does not know his fellow men, especially the most prominent one of the community, the master's master, the genius of the age. ~ Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

Obviously, our children, who have been playing with their computers since the age of five or six, don't have quite the same brain as those who were brought up on wooden or metal toys, whose brains are certainly atrophied by comparison. ~ Claude Vorilhon

But one half the children born, it is computed, die before the age of manhood. ~ Adam Smith

The virtues developed here in the age range [around the age of 2] of are trust or faith, and will power and self determination according to the Erickson model. The existential questions being addressed here in this stage are, can one trust the world? and, is it alright to be myself? ~ Leviak B. Kelly

All these polo-necked wankers from grammar schools were going out and buying songs like 'San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair)'. Flowers in your hair? Do me a f**king favour.
[...]
Who gave a dog's arse about what people were doing in San Francisco, anyway? The only flowers anyone saw in Aston were the ones they threw in the hole after you when you croaked it at the age of fifty-three 'cos you'd worked yourself to death.
I hated those hippy-dippy songs, man.
Really hated them. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

It is not easy to be crafty and winsome at the same time, and few accomplish it after the age of six. ~ John W. Gardner

I played guitar from the age of four or five. Every year there would be a slightly larger triangular box under the Christmas tree, until finally I got one that was big enough to make a proper sound. ~ Johnny Marr

The age is a vociferous one, and no prophet is without honor who is able to strike an attitude and to speak loud enough to make himself heard. ~ Ellen Glasgow

She's fifteen, above the age of consent, and he's seventeen, but he's still "the boy" in every conversation. She's "the young woman".

Words are not small things. ~ Fredrik Backman

In the specific case of abortion, the matter is particularly easy in that no woman wants a late abortion. Once abortion was made legal, the age of the aborted fetus went down. The slope slipped in the other direction. If we legalize RU-486 and other similar new drugs, the age will fall to one week or less and start approaching zero. The slippery slope will slide in the other direction. The only reason we have late abortions is because we make early abortion difficult. ~ Garrett Hardin

When I was in third grade
the age of many of the boys here
my parents had debated whether or not to buy me a pair of [special soccer shoes] ... Here in Bolivia most of the kids played in bare feet, and they had as much fun as we ever had. Alone, human beings can feel hunger. Alone, we can feel cold. Alone, we can feel pain. To feel poor, however, is something that we do only in comparison to others. I took off my shoes. ~ Eric Greitens

I'll tell you something of the forbidden horrors she led me into - something of the age-old horrors that even now are festering in out-of-the-way corners with a few monstrous priests to keep them alive. Some people know things about the universe that nobody ought to know, and can do things that nobody ought to be able to do. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

If you took all the killing in Star Wars and replaced it with fucking, you'd have an R-rated movie instead of PG. You ask me what's wrong with society? That's what's fucking wrong with society, that's everything that's wrong with society. From the age we're old enough to watch Star Wars we're told that sexuality is something we should be shy and timid about, while violence makes us heroes. Something we were designed to do is secret and shameful. Something we should never do is how we get things done. Star Wars is a great movie, don't get me wrong, but if you think its more acceptable for children than Looking For Alaska, because of the latter's sexual content, then your view of what it means to be human is seriously disturbed. ~ Max Davine

When I first left Iran at the age of 13, Iran had become such a shining star - it was the point to which all my desires and dreams returned. ~ Azar Nafisi

War has changed.

It's no longer about nations, ideologies, or ethnicity. It's an endless series of proxy battles, fought by mercenaries and machines.

War--and it's consumption of life--has become a well-oiled machine.

War has changed.

ID-tagged soldiers carry ID-tagged weapons, use ID-tagged gear. Nanomachines inside their bodies enhance and regulate their abilities.

Genetic control, information control, emotion control, battlefield control…everything is monitored and kept under control.

War…has changed.

The age of deterrence has become the age of control, all in the name of averting catastrophe from weapons of mass destruction, and he who controls the battlefield, controls history.

War…has changed.

When the battlefield is under total control, war becomes routine. ~ David Hayter

From the age of 14 to about 20, I bombarded record companies and DJs with my demos. I was desperate to get it out there. Most of the time, I got nothing back. ~ Calvin Harris

Although it might seem paradoxical, growing up in a family of liberal-minded atheists, committed but never militant, tends to have devastating consequences. Being raised without a rigid backdrop of religious, political, or spiritual beliefs makes it hard to have a real crises later in life. There is no way forward if your point of departure is the comfortable passivity of someone who has been a self-professed agnostic since the age of twelve, without ever having considered those important - one might say grave - matters, such as God, death, love, failure, or fear. For a precocious agnostic, the virtues offered by skepticism become terrifying hands that strangle and suffocate the already rare capacity of an individual to question things. Conversely, intelligent people who grow up thinking one thing and, on reaching a certain age, realize that everything they believe is open to doubt - stark, brutal doubt - can truly enjoy a profound crises that, in the worst cases, leads them to know themselves a little better. ~ Valeria Luiselli

The age of automobiles and aeroplanes cannot express itself in the same manner as did the age of the diligence. ~ Claude Debussy

By the age of three, the child has already laid down the foundations of his personality as a human being, and only then does he need the help of special scholastic influences. So great are the conquests he has made that one may well say: the child who goes to school at three is already a little man. ~ Maria Montessori

The Age of Adaline was very special because it marks for me the first male lead on a proper Hollywood production. ~ Michiel Huisman

Already at the age of sixteen I wondered at them gloomily; I was amazed at the pettiness of their minds, the stupidity of their activities, games, and conversations. They were so lacking in understanding of the most essential things, so devoid of interest in the most important, most remarkable matters, that I involuntarily began to look upon them as my inferiors. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19aGo therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you balways, even to the end of the age. [19 ~ Anonymous

Satan doesn't want the gospel to be preached in the whole world because he is afraid of what comes after that - the End of the Age. Matthew 24:14 ~ Felix Wantang

She had an old friend from the vaudeville days named Buck Mack who lived with her. Buck had been part of a vaudeville team called Miller & Mack and had been an extra in Citizen Kane. In modern terms, he was a personal assistant: he ran the house, kept everything running smoothly, and watched over her. At first, Buck regarded me as an interloper, but it wasn't long before he saw that Barbara and I genuinely loved each other, and he and I became good friends. Because of the age difference, neither of us wanted to have our relationship in the papers, and with the help of Helen Ferguson, her publicist and one of her best friends, we kept it quiet. There were only a few people who knew about us. Nancy Sinatra Sr. was one of them, because she and Barbara were close friends. I didn't tell anybody at Fox about our affair, although Harry Brand might have known, if only because Harry knew everything. Likewise, I always assumed that Darryl Zanuck knew, although he never said a word about it to me. That might have been because Darryl and Barbara had something of a history, a bad one: Barbara told me that Darryl had chased her around his office years earlier, and I got the distinct impression that she hadn't appreciated the exercise. ~ Robert J. Wagner

One of the most striking results of modern investigation has been the way in which several different and quite independent lines of evidence indicate that a very great event occurred about two thousand million years ago. The radio-active evidence for the age of meteorites; and the estimated time for the tidal evolution of the Moon's orbit (though this is much rougher), all agree in their testimony, and, what is far more important, the red-shift in the nebulae indicates that this date is fundamental, not merely in the history of our system, but in that of the material universe as a whole. ~ Henry Norris Russell

It was one of the great pleasures of the age, to be safe and warm and dry - showered, deodorized, professionally clothed in espadrilles and a linen jacket, latte steaming up the radio display, taking in the world's troubles three minutes at a time. That was luxury. ~ Jess Row

The age of miracles has not past. The Miracle Worker is still ALIVE. His name is Jesus Christ! ~ T. B. Joshua

I'm at the age most people are sending their kids off to college. ~ Laura Lippman

There are two kinds of warriors:
those on the battlefield,
and those in the boardroom;
both are out to win.
But the age of King Alexander has gone,
and the age of Bill Gates has come. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I got interested in astronomy at the age of 8 because I was looking at an atlas of the planets in my parents' apartment in Arlington, where I grew up. I got a telescope at age 10, which is pretty normal, and by the time I was in eighth grade, I had already seen a lot of cheesy sci-fi films. ~ Seth Shostak

The educator shall help the young to educate themselves in opposition to the age. ~ Georg Brandes

'The Secret River' began because, at the age of 50, I suddenly realised I knew nothing about how my own family had got its foothold in Australia. ~ Kate Grenville

In the age of information, ignorance is a choice. Question everything. Don't believe everything you hear. Come to your own conclusions. ~ Mark Patterson

In California the only way to look like you are getting older is to look like you are getting younger...if you can move your forehead over the age of forty, then people become very suspicious. ~ Matt Haig

Fourteen is the age when time first starts to make its presence felt. Time took on such a variety of hues in those days that even my frozen mind sometimes reflected the colours of the world around me, and I could feel my thoughts fluttering in the humid, salty breeze. At such moments, when the brilliant blue skies, the flaming carpets beneath the Gulmohur trees in the school grounds and the nut-brown twinkle in Sonia's eyes splashed into the moments of my life, I felt alive. Only time had no colour in the library. In the library, time simply ceased to be. ~ Indu Muralidharan

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. ~ Terry Pratchett

Isaacson's biography can be read in several ways. It is on the one hand a history of the most exciting time in the age of computers, when the machines first became personal and later, fashionable accessories. It is also a textbook study of the rise and fall and rise of Apple and the brutal clashes that destroyed friendships and careers. And it is a gadget lover's dream, with fabulous, inside accounts of how the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and iPad came into being. But more than anything, Isaacson has crafted a biography of a complicated, peculiar personality - Jobs was charming, loathsome, lovable, obsessive, maddening - and the author shows how Jobs's character was instrumental in shaping some of the greatest technological innovations ~ Walter Isaacson

I'm not busy ... a woman with three children under the age of 10 wouldn't think my schedule looked so busy. ~ Garrison Keillor

Poetry of World War I, at least in its lyrical mode, was itself the last flowering of the Age of Innocence that preceded the war, that the horrors of the trenches sparked the final blossoming, as friction gives rise to fire; that the daily nightmare unfolding before the soldiers sharpened their sense of beauty, prophecy, and mission. ~ Philip Zaleski

Oh, if I had been loved at the age of seventeen, what an idiot I would be today. Happiness is like smallpox: if you catch it too soon, it can completely ruin your constitution. ~ Gustave Flaubert

There were many ways in which I disliked my sister. A few years ago I could have shown you whole scribbled lists I had written on that very topic. I hated her for the fact that she's got thick, straight hair, while mine breaks off if it grows beyond my shoulders. I hated her for the fact that you can never tell her anything that she doesn't already know. I hated her for the fact that for my whole school career teachers insisted on telling me in hushed tones how bright she was, as if her brilliance wouldn't mean that by default I lived in a permanent shadow. I hated her for the fact that at the age of twenty-six I lived in a box room in a semidetached house just so she could have her illegitimate son in with her in the bigger bedroom. ~ Jojo Moyes

As John Adams famously wrote during the American Revolution, "I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. Our sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelain." So maybe today they're writing apps rather than studying poetry, but that's an adjustment for the age. ~ Fareed Zakaria

I think a huge amount of it is because of the Internet. Every single thing in the world is accessible with a few clicks. Almost every child, by the age of 13, has seen pornography. That's clearly different. It used to be really hard or really humiliating, as a 13-year-old, to access pornography. If you wanted to take a look at a Playboy, it was really challenging. Today, it's a joke. ~ David Schwimmer