And this, our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the
running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
-As You Like It

The only complete pleasures, I'd come to realize, were voluntary ones. When an infernal hankering has robbed you of your free will, when you are compelled by commingled physical and psychological need to succumb to a predictable euphoria, what you are feeling is more relief than joy.
-Taras Grescoe, _The Devil's Picnic_

I'm sitting on the corner feeling glad
Got no money comin in but I can't be sad
That was the best cup of coffee I ever had
And I won't worry bout a thing because we've got it made
Here on the inside, outside so far away.
-Jethro Tull

When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks made them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb.
-Zora Neale Hurston

I had forgotten that there is no auto-erotic substitute for a kiss.
-Nicholson Baker, _The Fermata_

Friendship is certainly the best balm for the pangs of disappointed love.
-Jane Austen

There is no love sincerer than the love for food.
-G.B. Shaw

You will develop black secrets and commit black actions. You will be shocked at the insensitivites you are capable of, yet you will be unable to stop them. And by the time you are thirty, your friends will all have black secrets too, but it will be years before you find out exactly what those black secrets are.
Douglas Coupland, _Shampoo Planet_