"Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself, and then comes to resemble the picture."

Iris Murdoch (as quoted by Simon Leys in NYRB)

"The finest people marry the two sexes in their own person."


~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Something we were withholding made us weak until we found it was ourselves."

(Robert Frost)

"The vision that you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart - this you will build your life by, and this you will become."

-- James Lane Allen (1849-1925)

"I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of ones eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe."

Maya Angelou