Readers have asked me about the quotes I use in the front part of the books as well as the quotes that often appear throughout the stories. Many of them I search out for specific story purposes. However, I also keep a collection on hand of eloquent, insightful and sometimes humorous quotations that I love. Here is just a sampling.

“We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow man; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.” - Herman Melville

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom” - Anaïs Nin

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage." - Lao Tzu

“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.” - Rumi

“Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.” - Sir Winston Churchill

“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.” - Erma Bombeck

“Never accept a drink from a urologist.” - Erma Bombeck

“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.” - Erma Bombeck

"True love cannot be found where it truly does not exist, Nor can it be hidden where it truly does." - Anonymous

“What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” - Gandhi

“Our brightest blazes of happiness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks.”
- Samuel Johnson

“There are only three things which make life worth living: to be writing a tolerably good book, to be in a dinner party of six, and to be traveling south with someone whom your conscience permits you to love.” - Cyril Connolly

“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.” - Antoine de Saint-Exubery

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth.” - Unknown

“I told the doctor my brother is crazy. He thinks he's a chicken.' The doctor says, 'Well, why don't you turn him in?' And I said, 'I would, but I need the eggs.’” - Woody Allen

"To love another person is to see the face of God." - Victor Hugo

“Open your hidden eyes and return to the root of the root of yourself.” - Rumi

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” - John Muir

“Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.”
- Lou Holtz

“A cat will look down to a man. A dog will look up to a man. But a pig will look you straight in the eye and see his equal.” - Winston Churchill

"The most wonderful of all things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one's relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase. This inner progressiveness of love between two human beings is a most marvelous thing; it cannot be found by looking for it or by passionately wishing for it. It is a sort of divine accident, and the most wonderful of all things in life." - Sir Hugh Walpole

“The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." - Carl Jung

"Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."
- P. J. O'Rourke

"Let silence take you to the core of life." – Rumi

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it." - Andre Gide

“Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.” - Ludwig Börne

“Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” - Henry David Thoreau

“It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos.”
- John L. McClenahan

“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” - Yogi Berra

“If at first you don't succeed then skydiving isn't for you.” - Unknown

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
- George Bernard Shaw

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible." Bertrand Russell

"The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."
- Eden Philpotts

“Energy and persistence conquer all things.” - Benjamin Franklin

"Believe nothing,
no matter where you read it
or who has said it,
not even if I have said it,
unless it agrees with
your own reason
and your own common sense." - Buddha

“God and nature do nothing in vain.” - Auctoritates Aristotelis

“The brick walls are not there to keep us out, the brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something,” he said. "Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough. They're there to stop the OTHER people."- Randy Pausch

“I read recipes the same way I read science fiction. I get to the end and think, ‘Well, that's not going to happen.’” - Rita Rudner

“A writer needs three things, experience, observation, and imagination, any two of which, at times any one of which, can supply the lack of the others.” - William Faulkner

“Real writers are those who want to write, need to write, have to write.”
- Robert Penn Warren

“Never write about a place until you're away from it, because that gives you perspective.” - Ernest Hemingway

“Experience is a good teacher. But she runs up big bills.” - Minna Antrim

“Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.” - Unknown

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” - Ambrose Redmoon

“That which is not a necessity is an encumbrance.” - Nomad saying

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth” - Buddha

“If you’re going to tell the truth, have one foot in the stirrup.” - Arabic proverb.

“There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.” - Buddha

“And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” - T.S. Eliot