“Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it.”

“Stories make us more alive, more human, more courageous, more loving.”

“Our country in general assumes that "the pursuit of happiness" really means "the pursuit of pleasure" and that therefore pleasure is the greatest good.”

“Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. - Mrs. Whatsit”

“The unending paradox is that we do learn through pain.”

“Come t'e' picciol fallo amaro morso! Dante. What grievous pain a little fault doth give thee!”

“Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, an...”

“There is no complete theory of anything.”

“My theory is that all of Scottish cuisine is based on a dare.”

“Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.”

“Dont cry and dont rage. Understand.”

“The only way to heal yourself was to understand. Understand the love or the hate or the cowardice, or the impulsiveness, the lack of will of the one who hurt you--the circumstances that twisted the...”