"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To an extent that we could not at first imagine, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 200l, have transformed the politics and policy of the United States. A president of dubious legitimacy, put in office by ballot confusion in Florida and a lawless majority of the Supreme Court, has become a charismatic leader admired by a large majority of Americans. He has used his wartime aura to silence critics, greatly enlarge presidential power, and suppress civil liberties. His administration, once cautious about foreign entanglements, now promises to use its military power aggressively in the world. Without a clear casus belli, the president is using the support he has for a war on terrorism to prepare for war on a different enemy, Saddam Hussein's Iraq. All this raises profound questions about our country and ourselves ... have we been so frightened by Sept. 11 that for the moment we want leadership without qualms?"
-- Anthony Lewis, New York Review of Books.

"The problem with the designated driver program is, it's not a desirable job. But if you ever get sucked into doing it, have fun with it. At the end of the night, drop them off at the wrong house."
-- Jeff Bridges, actor.

"...our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-lived... When America works, America prospers, so my economic security plan can be summed up in one word: jobs."
-- George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, last year.

" There must be more to life than having everything."
-- Maurice Sendak

"When you are on a journey, it is certainly helpful to know where you are going or at least the general direction in which you are moving, but don't forget: the only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That's all there ever is."
-- Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

"When you live long enough, everything happens."
-- Al Hirschfeld, artist

"I wouldn't know what to do. That's a special talent - to retire. I'm no good at that."
-- Al Hirschfeld, artist, one week before his death at age 99 in an interview with Sixty Minutes.

capitonym (KAP-i-toh-NIM), noun. A word that changes pronunciation and meaning when it is capitalized. As in the following poems:

Job's Job
In August, an august patriarch
Was reading an ad in Reading, Mass.
Long-suffering Job secured a job
To polish piles of Polish brass.

Herb's Herbs
An herb store owner, name of Herb,
Moved to a rainier Mount Rainier.
It would have been so nice in Nice,
And even tangier in Tangier.

-- AWAD, website

"Teachers who are cookie cutters are not what we need. We need teachers who are creative and empowered."
-- Joel I Klein, NYC schools chancellor, on implementing a new systemwide curriculum, in today's New York Times.

"Oh, I don't drink these days, I am allergic to alcohol and narcotics. I break out in handcuffs."
-- Robert Downey, Jr., actor.

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed - we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr., Address at March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963.

“Be happy. It is a way of being wise.”
-- Colette

"If Jesus Christ had lived in Chicago, and he had $5,000, and he'd come to me, things would've turned out different.''
-- Richard Gere as defense attorney Billy Flynn in Chicago, motion picture.

"What a nightmare it must be to have a real family."
-- Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Elaine, on Seinfeld.

"You should've seen her face. It was the exact same look my father gave me when I told him I wanted to be a ventriloquist."
-- Jason Alexander as George, on Seinfeld.

"I trust Bush with my daughter, but I trust Clinton with my job."
-- Craig Patterson, Ironworker, in USA Today.

"Shut the door. Not that it lets in the cold but that it lets out the cozyness."
-- Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Notebook

"When people agree with me I always feel that I must be wrong."
-- Oscar Wilde

"New York is a prison, and we are all our own jailers."
-- David Carman, My Dinner with Andre

"He who says it cannot be done should get out of the way of the one who is doing it."
-- Chinese Proverb

"What do you mean you don't do e-mail? Who doesn't have e-mail today? How can you work without e-mail? Get with it. Stop living in the 1800s. What do you write letters with, a quill pen? I'm ashamed of you."
-- Cari Rivera, wife of Matthew Modine, as quoted by Cindy Adams in yesterday's New York Post.

'Let's have some new clichés!"
-- Samuel Goldwyn, producer.

"Don't you see? The rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers. I think of us that way sometimes, and I live here."
-- Woody Allen, Annie Hall

"It's the New York kids you can't find anywhere else - downtown kids with their overdeveloped senses of humor, their wise-ass remarks, their irony. They're survivors. You can't fake a New York kid."
-- Susan Sarandon, actress, as quoted in New York Magazine.

"As soon as the novelty is over and the force of contrast dulled, it ain't happiness any longer, and you have to get something fresh."
Mark Twain, Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven

"Borrowing money from a friend is like having sex. It just completely changes the relationship."
- George Costanza, Seinfeld, tv series.

"If you would thoroughly know anything, teach it to others."
-- Tryon Edwards

"Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page. Take up one hole more in the buckle if necessary, or let down one, according to circumstances; but on the first of January let every man gird himself once more, with his face to the front, and take no interest in the things that were and are past."
-- Henry Ward Beecher