His works should be required reading, he is so clear in both the strength and the weaknesses of the American experience.

Adenauer's quotes are very much the Adenauer I know as our first chancellor after WWII. Duerrenmatt sounds pessimistic, but has not time proven him right?

Florence King Quotes American - Writer Born: January 5, 1936 True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories. Florence King In social matters, pointless conventions are not merely the bee sting of etiquette, but the snake bite of moral order. Florence King Now the only thing I miss about sex is the cigarette afterward. Next to the first one in the morning, it's the best one of all. It tasted so good that even if I had been frigid I would have pretended otherwise just to be able to smoke it. Florence King People are so busy dreaming the American Dream, fantasizing about what they could be or have a right to be, that they're all asleep at the switch. Consequently we are living in the Age of Human Error. Florence King The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners. Florence King American couples have gone to such lengths to avoid the interference of in-laws that they have to pay marriage counselors to interfere between them. Florence King Showing up at school already able to read is like showing up at the undertaker's already embalmed: people start worrying about being put out of their jobs. Florence King Americans worship creativity the way they worship physical beauty - as a way of enjoying elitism without guilt: God did it. Florence King He travels fastest who travels alone, and that goes double for she. Real feminism is spinsterhood. Florence King I'd rather rot on my own floor than be found by a bunch of bingo players in a nursing home. Florence King Time has lost all meaning in that nightmare alley of the Western world known as the American mind. Florence King Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in. Florence King Writers, not psychiatrists, are the true interpreters of the human mind and heart, and we have been at it for a very long time. Florence King To achieve the very pinnacle of good taste, the neoclassicists wrote their plays entirely in alexandrine verse, a rarefied meter that is uniquely tailored to the French language and fits no other. Florence King Michael O'Donoghue Quotes American - Writer January 5, 1940 - November 8, 1994 It's very easy to make insects move. Because they do move mechanically without the rippling of flesh as you mentioned. They move more like real tinker toys and you can make models of them quite easily. Michael O'Donoghue Working with Woody Allen is like filming Howard Hughes's will. It's a very mysterious and strange event. You never get a peek at the whole will. Michael O'Donoghue Television doesn't want to admit it has those dreadful roach ads on anyway. Michael O'Donoghue Insects are my secret fear. That's what terrifies me more than anything - insects. Michael O'Donoghue Anyway, the title The War of the Insect Gods came before we had that ending, before we knew they had become gods. That we knew the evolutionary cycle they went through. Before we even knew anything about that. We had an ending. Michael O'Donoghue A Madagascar Hissing Roach chasing Jerry Lewis. That would be a really neat treat. Michael O'Donoghue Nothing important has ever come out of San Francisco, Rice-a-Roni aside. Michael O'Donoghue Once you put yourself in the hands of the government, you could end up in Utah. Michael O'Donoghue I try to attack all races and creeds, except the Irish. Clearly they are closest to the angels and don't deserve abuse. But the others have it coming. Michael O'Donoghue I think therapy interferes with the creative process. It takes off the edge. Michael O'Donoghue I am Hollywood's hottest young, middle-aged director, but I'll write out of New York because I don't want to become a salad head. That's what you become out there: a guacamole dip. Michael O'Donoghue One of my problems is I am getting so mature that I have to pick up a TV and toss it through the coffee table just to remind people of who I am. I want to go ranting and screaming into the grave. Michael O'Donoghue Any good humor is sophomoric. 'Sophomoric' is the liberal word for funny. Michael O'Donoghue Making people laugh is the lowest form of comedy. Michael O'Donoghue The true essence of comedy is a baby seal hunt. Michael O'Donoghue Sometimes you have to be cruel... in order to be even crueler. Michael O'Donoghue Hayao Miyazaki Quotes Japanese - Director Born: January 5, 1941 I am an animator. I feel like I'm the manager of a animation cinema factory. I am not an executive. I'm rather like a foreman, like the boss of a team of craftsmen. That is the spirit of how I work. Hayao Miyazaki I can't stand modern movies. The images are too weird and eccentric for me. Hayao Miyazaki I don't like games. You're robbing the precious time of children to be children. They need to be in touch with the real world more. Hayao Miyazaki I think Tokyo is going to sink under water soon. All those stupid high-rise buildings will sink and maybe all the traffic will be gone. And everything will be peaceful and quiet. Hayao Miyazaki All my films are all my children. Hayao Miyazaki I do all my work by storyboard, so as I draw the storyboard, the world gets more and more complex, and as a result, my North, South, East, West directions kind of shift and go off base, but it seems like my staff as well as the audience, doesn't quite realize that this has happened. Don't tell them about it. Hayao Miyazaki Animators can only draw from their own experiences of pain and shock and emotions. Hayao Miyazaki Plants exist in the weather and light rays that surround them - waving in the wind, shimmering in the sunlight. I am always puzzling over how to draw such things. Hayao Miyazaki We get strength and encouragement from watching children. Hayao Miyazaki I think we should stop using nuclear power plants because it's an old system that we can't control. Hayao Miyazaki I get inspiration from my everyday life. Hayao Miyazaki Humans have both the urge to create and destroy. Hayao Miyazaki People in Japan have experienced many tsunamis and various earthquakes throughout the ages. Hayao Miyazaki I like underwater life. Hayao Miyazaki Watching John Lasseter's films, I think I can understand better than anyone that what he's doing, is going straight ahead with his vision and working really hard to get that vision into film form. And I feel that my understanding this of him is my friendship towards him. Hayao Miyazaki Sometimes I test myself saying, 'If I get a death sentence if I don't make this movie, would I still make this movie?' Hayao Miyazaki My process is thinking, thinking and thinking - thinking about my stories for a long time. Hayao Miyazaki To have a film where there's an evil figure and a good person fights against the evil figure and everything becomes a happy ending, that's one way to make a film. But then that means you have to draw, as an animator, the evil figure. And it's not very pleasant to draw evil figures. Hayao Miyazaki It would be wonderful if I could see the end of civilization during my lifetime. Hayao Miyazaki We live in an age when it is cheaper to buy the rights to movies than to make them. Hayao Miyazaki I never read reviews. I'm not interested. But I value a lot the reactions of the spectators. Hayao Miyazaki I create women characters by watching the female staff at my studio. Half the staff are women. Hayao Miyazaki I'd like more of the world go back to being wild. Hayao Miyazaki If you're going to retire, retire early. Hayao Miyazaki Currently computer graphics are used a great deal, but it can be excessive. Hayao Miyazaki I can't do a film after having debated it. I am unable to do a film while discussing it with my team. I issue directives. I do not achieve it otherwise. Hayao Miyazaki Is someone different at age 18 or 60? I believe one stays the same. Hayao Miyazaki When a man is shooting a handgun, it's just like he is shooting because that's his job, and he has no other choice. It's no good. When a girl is shooting a handgun, it's really something. Hayao Miyazaki It seems like everything that we see perceived in the brain before we actually use our own eyes, that everything we see is coming through computers or machines and then is being input in our brain cells. So that really worries me. Hayao Miyazaki I'm not a collector. Hayao Miyazaki I think it's really good for a family or children to have a dog, cat, bird or whatever to grow up with. I've never studied psychology. Hayao Miyazaki I wish I was better at art. I love some of the great artists of the 19th century and, compared to them, I just feel I lack this technique that they had. They have so much skill. Hayao Miyazaki I don't intentionally make deep movies. Hayao Miyazak

All quotes are nice, but the one before the last strikes home. I am in the process to clear out drawers, mostly papers and don't make much progress. There is so much which once was important enough to be saved and then forgotten and of course you can't throw it away without re-reading and remembering. The drawback of this, you go on the computer and look for updates and of course you have to safe those.