Quotations

"If my mother hadn't laughed at the funny things I did, I probably wouldn't be a comic actor. After she had her first heart attack, the doctor said, 'Try to make her laugh.' And that was the first time I tried to make anyone laugh."

— Gene Wilder, American actor, born June 11, 1933

"Sometimes life gives us lessons sent in ridiculous packaging."

— Dar Williams, American singer, born April 19, 1967

"Everyone has to decide how they're going to appear in their lives, how they're going to put themselves out there to the world."

— Dar Williams, American singer, born April 19, 1967

"You need to make peace before leaving Earth."

— Sunita Williams, American astronaut, born September 19, 1965

"When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone."

— Tennessee Williams, American playwright, born March 26, 1911

"Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace. What you need is someone to take hold of you--gently, with love, and hand your life back to you, like something gold you let go of--and I can! I'm determined to do it--and nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin roof--is there?"

— Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, wins Pulitzer Prize for Drama, May 2, 1955

"First we have to see. Or first we have to be taught to see. We have to be taught to see here, because here is everywhere, related to everywhere else, and if we don't see, hear, taste, smell and feel in this place - not only will we never know anything but the world of sense will be by that much diminished everywhere."

— William Carlos Williams, American poet, born 1883

"It is difficult to get news from poems, yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."

— William Carlos Williams, American poet, born 1883

"As birds' wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight."

— William Carlos Williams, American poet, born 1883

"The poem springs from the half spoken words of the patient. When asked, how I have for so many years continued an equal interest in medicine and the poem, I reply that they amount for me to nearly the same thing."

— William Carlos Williams, American poet, born 1883

"What power has love but forgiveness? In other words by its intervention what has been done can be undone. What good is it otherwise?"

— William Carlos Williams, American poet, born 1883

"Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here."

— Marianne Williamson, American spiritual teacher, born 1952

"We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present."

— Marianne Williamson, American spiritual teacher, born 1952

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond all measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won't feel unsure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. As we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

— Marianne Williamson, American spiritual teacher, born 1952