Handpicked favourites among things said and written by people

• "If you have the facts, pound the facts. If you have the law, pound the law. If you have neither, pound the table." -- an old legal aphorism.
• "An archaeologist is a man who studies old things and finds they are new."  -- G.K.Chesterton in The Man Who Knew Too Much.
• "It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil, it's what comes out of their mouths that is." -- Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist.
• "It's not levi-OO-sa, not levio-SA!" -- J.K.Rowling via Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone.
• "Eye of rabbit, harp string hum, turn this water into rum!" -- Seamus Finnigan in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.
• "...the different branches of arithmetic -- ambition, distraction, uglification and derision." -- Lewis Carroll via The Mock Turtle in Alice in Wonderland.
• "Words mean more than we mean to express when we use them." -- Lewis Carroll.
• "If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic." -- Lewis Carroll via Tweedledee in Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There. 
• "A play, like a cat, has several lives." -- Introduction to Twelfth Night in the Arden Edition. 
• "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live." -- J.K.Rowling via Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. 
• "Did you miss me?" -- Moriarty in BBC's 2010 TV series, Sherlock. 
• "I'm just gonna take a minute to let it ride. I'm just gonna take a minute and let it breeze." -- K'naan in Take a Minute.
• "Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it." -- J.K.Rowling via Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. 
• "Her shadow it was that tremblers had feared through long generations after her poor frame was dust." -- Charlotte Bronte in Vilette.
• "Poetry is indeed something divine... it is that which comprehends all science, and that to which all science must be referred." -- P.B. Shelley.
• "If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?" -- P.B. Shelley.
• "Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask and he will tell you the truth." -- Oscar Wilde.
• "I will drink/ Life to the lees." -- Tennyson in Ulysses.
• "I am the unified self-controlled center of the universe." -- White European Man of the Ruling Class. 
• "It is our choices,... that show what we truly are..." -- J.K. Rowling via Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
• "One day God and Met somewhere and both exclaimed, 'My Creator!'" -- Ankana Bhattacharya, my sister.
• "The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing." -- Stephen Covey.
• "Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out." -- Markus Zusak in The Book Thief. 
• "Time moves slowly, but passes quickly." -- Alice Walker in The Colour Purple.
• "Everything was mud... everyone was mud. As the wheel (pottery) turns, as it is moulded, that which comes out is the shape of man." -- G. Kalyana Rao in Untouchable Spring. 
• "We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words." -- John Fowles in The French Lieutenant's Woman.
• "I feel like I've lived only one day with a thousand memories." -- Varening Konghay, my graduation classmate.
• "Between what is said and not meant and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost." -- Kahlil Gibran. 

Voices

Voices in my head,

They just keep getting louder and louder,

And they’re all my enemies.

It’s like they have my brain hostage.

It makes me want to cry,

But I can’t.

The face must be firm.

No one must know.

These voices, they love to talk.

They go on and on and on...

They always have something new to say,

Something to make me feel bad

Or else vain.

But I know,

They are the children of loneliness,

Of emptiness,

Of having nothing to do

And no one to laugh with.

No one to want me and what I want.

No one to care. 

Only to sneer at me and smirk.

One day I’m too young to understand,

And the next, I’m being asked

Why I can’t understand

Something so simple.

Everybody is smarter.

Everybody knows more.

No one wants what I have.

I must have what everybody wants.

So I keep myself busy.

Busy with whatever I can.

For all the world’s a stage

And I’m just one

Of the common actors

Playing one among the crowd.

I just play my part faithfully.

I never get the lead.

That is for the smart people,

The ones who know everything.

I don’t know how to make

My way in this world,

Or in the world where

The voices come from.

I’m just me and I’m alone.

And that’s all I’ll ever be.