Any Van Quotes & Sayings

See it in terms of paint. We don't learn subject matter, we learn paint. The musician can play any score that is set before him. — Helen Van Wyk

Like all of my important memories, it has a potency that has influenced the pocket of time that holds it, so I can remember that particular Saturday afternoon, even though in many ways it was no different from any other. I can remember, for example, what van der Glick was wearing as she stepped out of the elevator, which was a dress covered with clownish polka dots. Rainie would make these heartbreaking stabs at femininity; indeed, she still does. It's not that she doesn't possess a woman's body now, and didn't posses a girl's body then. But clothes never seemed to fit her correctly, and the more girlish they were, the worse they would hang. — Paul Quarrington

Before the operation on my left hand I wasn't able to stretch my fingers open all the way. I've never had very big hands, but I could do the splits with them. Eventually I couldn't any more. I had a twisted tendon in my little finger that prevented me from being able to stretch. — Eddie Van Halen

Well, I dare not allow myself any illusions, and I am afraid it may never happen that Father and Mother will really appreciate my art. It is not their fault; we do not see the same things with the same eyes, or have the same thoughts raised in us by them. They will never be able to understand what painting is. — Vincent Van Gogh

Well," Peter Van Houten said, extending his hand to me. "It is at any rate a pleasure to meet such ontologically improbable creatures." I shook his swollen hand, and then he shook hands with Augustus. I was wondering what ontologically meant. Regardless, I liked it. Augustus and I were together in the Improbable Creatures Club: us and duck-billed platypuses. — John Green

I adore you. I shall never love any-
body in my life as I adore you, never and nowhere, neither in
eternity, nor in terrenity, neither in Ladore, nor on Terra, where they say our souls go. But! But, my love, my Van, I'm
physical, horribly physical — Vladimir Nabokov

I've been to more racetracks than any other person I've met. Almost every track, missing only a few of the newer ones. — Dick Van Patten

Men make the mistake of thinking that because women can't see the sense in violence, they must be passive creatures. It's just not true. In one important way, at least, men are the passive sex. Given a choice, they will always opt for the status quo. They hate change of any kind, and they fight against it constantly. On the other hand, what women want is stability, which when you stop to think about it is a very different animal. — Eric Van Lustbader

And I will close my eyes and prepare myself so that they can unscrew my head and allow the map to slip into my lacunae. So that I can be filled and braced from the inside and fortified for the voyage. Because without my world inside me I will contract and congeal, more even than I am now, without speech and without actions and without any purchase upon time. — Marlene Van Niekerk

The piano is a universal instrument. If you start there, learn your theory and how to read, you can go on to any other instrument. — Eddie Van Halen

For many of us we are always wanting more - we would be happier if we had such and such. Maybe we should pause for a moment and hear what some people in the third world countries would like to make them happier. 1. Having enough to eat so when you go to sleep at night your stomach doesn't ach. 2. Having shoes on your feet and any kind of clothing to keep the cold out. 3. Having a roof over your head. 4. Having the hope that you'll be lucky enough to get some kind of an education. 5. Believing that the dream of freedom, brotherhood, and peace for all mankind will someday come true. — Abigail Van Buren

..why sit on the sidelines of life at any age? — Dick Van Dyke

If teaching has any purpose, it is to implant true insight and responsibility. Education must lead us from irresponsible opinion to true responsible judgement. It must lead us from chance and arbitrariness to rational clarity and intellectual order. — Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

I started reading SF when I was about twelve and I read all I could, so any author who was writing about that time, I read. But there's no doubt who got me off originally and that was A. E.
van Vogt. — Philip K. Dick

At a certain point in the writing of any book, you become absolutely certain that it's terrible and is only getting more terrible with every word you write. This is normal. You just have to keep going, push your way through, and have faith that, through practice and experience and determination, you will get to the end. — Greg Van Eekhout

I think any supernatural hero today, whether he's a vampire, werewolf, a resuscitated mummy, whatever he is, is going to have to deal with the fact that scientists are going to want to catch him and study him. His big enemy is not going to be Dr. Van Helsing today, it's going to be the doctor who wants to put him in a lab and get his blood for what it can do to cure disease or grant immortality. — Anne Rice

Following my muse has worked out pretty well so far. I can't see any reason to change the formula now. — Chris Van Allsburg

I've probably had more jobs than any other actor living. — Dick Van Patten

I can say this: don't give up. Not on love but, more important still, not on you. Never let yourself believe that you are unlovable or flawed in any way. You deserve to be loved. You deserve kind words and an unwavering eye. — Menna Van Praag

To sum up what is most crucial in Japanese political culture: the Japanese have never been encouraged to think that the force of an idea could measure up to the physical forces of a government. The key to understanding Japanese power relations is that they are unregulated by transcendental concepts. The public has no intellectual means to a consistent judgement of the political aspects of life. The weaker, ideologically inspired political groups or individuals have no leverage of any kind over the status quo other than the little material pressure they are sometimes able to muster. In short, Japanese political practice is a matter of 'might is right' disguised by assurances and tokens of 'benevolence'. — Karel Van Wolferen

Alec tilted his head. "You really don't see it do you?"
"See what?" I swallowed out of nervousness. Alec's eyes bore into mine as if he was trying to figure out a piece to some giant puzzle. His gaze made me want to squirm, but I was able to keep myself still.
"How breathtaking you are." His eyes shone with appreciation. "Nat, you're absolutely gorgeous without any help from make up or fancy clothes. — Rachel Van Dyken

Ivo van Hove is directing The Crucible, and rehearses in quite an unusual way. We started rehearsals last week and dived straight into the first act, like, five minutes after we all turned up. No warm-ups. We were very intensely immersed in that whole world on day one. It was quite surreal because I've never done any theater before. — Saoirse Ronan

Jesper swung first. Kaz dodged right and then they were grappling. They slammed into the wall, knocked heads, drew apart in a flurry of punches and grabs. Wylan turned to Inej, expecting her to object, for Matthias to separate them, for someone to do something, but the others just backed up, making room. Only Kuwei showed any kind of distress.
Jesper and Kaz swung around, crashed into the mechanism of the clock, righted themselves. It wasn't a fight, it was a brawl--graceless, a tangle of elbows and fists.
"Ghezen and his works, someone stop them!" Wylan said desperately. — Leigh Bardugo

Molly Notkin often confides on the phone to Joelle van Dyne about the one tormented love of Nokin's life thus far, an erotically circumscribed G.W. Pabst scholar at New York University tortured by the neurotic compulsion that there are only a finite number of erections possible in the world at any one time and that his tumescence means e.g. the detumescence of some perhaps more deserving or tortured Third World sorghum farmer — David Foster Wallace

I don't think I can tell any stories about how I lived in a van in Alaska. I grew up in the suburbs, I even had my own room. We weren't poor. Everything was very normal. — Lisa Loeb

If one limits to developing only the kitchen and bathroom as standardized rooms because of their installation, and then also decides to arrange the remaining living area with movable walls, I believe that any justified living requirements can be met. — Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

You are everything that's beautiful and pure in this world, and you deserve so much better than this life, than what any of us have to offer. Than what I have to offer. — Rachel Van Dyken

Jack Stepney had once said of Miss Van Osburgh that she was as reliable as roast mutton. His own taste was in the line of less solid and more highly-seasoned diet; but hunger makes any fare palatable, and there had been times when Mr. Stepney had been reduced to a crust. — Edith Wharton

I don't put myself above anyone, and I have as many shortcomings as any non-believer. I just choose to turn to a higher power to help me gain wisdom and, I hope, improve over time. — Van Jones

It isn't an easy job to paint oneself - at any rate if it is to be different from a photograph. And you see - this, in my opinion, is the advantage that impressionism possesses over all the other things; it is not banal, and one seeks after a deeper resemblance than the photograph. — Vincent Van Gogh

Thirst, hunger, heat, cold, discomfort, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, fear, and often pain and suffering as well all remain exactly what they have been since time immemorial. Any commander worth his salt will make sure his troops will get habituated to them, as far as possible, before he leads them on campaign. However, to speak with Epaminondas, the place to achieve this is the field and not the gym or the playing court. The members of football teams do not enter the field hungry; should they suffer a serious injury, they expect to be evacuated and taken care of immediately. — Martin Van Creveld

I want to put any number of assorted 'ists' - such as relativists, deconstructionists, destructivists, postmodernists, the more maudlin kind of pacifists and feminists - firmly in their place. — Martin Van Creveld

Showing myself nude from behind doesn't pose any problems, but from the front that's another story. I don't want to lose all my fans! — Jean-Claude Van Damme

Hope you didn't bring any spiders into the van with you,' Simon put in. 'Hey, I'm thinking we could take you back outside and hose you down, just to make sure. You'd definitely smell better if we did, which, I mean, bonus.'
Jeremy scraped both hands through his hair again, then beat them clean against his thighs. 'Believe me, Simon, if we had access to a garden hose, I'd be the first to turn it on myself. I feel foul.'
'Hate to break it to you, Archer, but that feeling is not lying to you,' Simon said with mild relish. — M. Chandler

We wait here to meet the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam to discuss together a ceremony of orderly transfer of power so as to avoid any unnecessary bloodshed in the population. — Duong Van Minh

If you are strong, and you are fighting the weak for any period of time, you are going to become weak yourself. If you behave like a coward, then you are going to become cowardly - it's only a question of time. — Martin Van Creveld

Oatmeal Face, Jawless, and the other revenants dragged me out of the van by the zip tie between my hands. The sharp plastic bit painfully into my wrists.
"All right, all right, I'm coming," I said. "Keep your faces on."
There was no reaction from any of them. Humor was wasted on the dead. — Nicholas Kaufmann

Creativity is seeing what everyone else sees, but then thinking a new thought that has never been thought before and expressing it somehow.It could be with art, a sculpture, music or even in science. The difference, however, between scientific creativity and any other kind of creativity, is that no matter how long you wait, no one else will ever compose "Beethoven's Ninth Symphony" except for Beethoven. No matter what you do, no one else will paint Van Gogh's "Starry Night." Only Van Gogh could do that because it came from his creativity. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

It is obvious that any rather non-color, monochromatic design is safe, easier, more generally restful and with life being the hurdy-gurdy that it is, more and more of us prefer and interior giving the maximum response. — Van Day Truex

In the early 1970s. 1971, '72. The rooms were closing down, record labels weren't signing acoustic acts any more. Although they had been pretty much been getting out of that for some time before that. — Dave Van Ronk

The purpose of studying opening theory should not be accumulating any set amount of knowledge, but being content with whatever knowledge one has. — Paul Van Der Sterren

We don't really want to know what soldiers go through in combat. We do not really want to know how many children are being molested and abused in our own society or how many couples - almost a third, as it turns out - engage in violence at some point during their relationship. We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge? — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Rembrandt is so deeply mysterious that he says things for which there are no words in any language. — Vincent Van Gogh

It's funny, I don't feel any older than I did when I was twenty. But I know I am, because recently some twenty-year-old called me 'sir.' Sometimes the only way you know you are getting older is by the way others treat you. — John Van Epp

Those Dutchmen had hardly any imagination or fantasy, but their good taste and their scientific knowledge of composition were enormous. — Vincent Van Gogh

For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream. — Vincent Van Gogh

Dani: Crank it up. Lets get this party started. *I hand Dancer my iPod.*
Lor: What is this crap. Where the hell is Hendrix on this thing?
Jo: Did you get any Muse?
Dani: Muse is something you do
Jo: Distrubed is something you are
Dancer: And Godsmacked is something you get
Lor: Don't you have any Motley Crue or Van Halen?
Christian: How about some Flogging Molly?
Ryodan: Whats the deal with all the Linkin Park, for fuck's sake.
Dancer: Mega has a crush on Chester
Jo: You got any Adele?
Dani: Got some Nicki Minaj.
Ryodan: Somebody kill me now. — Karen Marie Moning

The ego certainly is the biggest obstacle as an artist or performer, so any chance you get to destroy that is really healthy. — James Van Der Beek

Culture is any and all human effort and labor expended upon the cosmos, to unearth its treasures and its riches and bring them into the service of man for the enrichment of human existence unto the glory of God. — Henry R. Van Til

Any successful long-term strategy will require that the green wave fully and passionately embrace the principles of eco-equity. — Van Jones

Paul Simon once said that a songwriter's supreme challenge was being complex and simple at the same time-writing songs with lasting depth that are also simple enough to be memorable. Jimmy Van Heusen was a master at this kind of song. His music was complex, with deeply rich chord changes any jazzman can embrace, but also possessed catchy, crystalline melodies of exceeding sing-ability. His songs were meant to be sung, not just listened to, and they were sung by the best, with Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby at the top of that list. — Paul Zollo

I shouldn't precisely have chosen madness if there had been any choice, but once such a thing has taken hold of you, you can't very well get out of it. — Vincent Van Gogh

If you don't have the story and the unfolding of the trajectory of the saga, it's like getting in a car and not having any gas. — Gus Van Sant

Knowing that what's in your head might not be right - but not having any idea how to fix it. — Rachel Van Dyken

My love for you will always be stronger than any truth. — Simon Van Booy

Real programmers don't work from 9 to 5. If any real programmers are around at 9am it's because they were up all night. — Tom Van Vleck

But newspapers have a duty to truth,' Van said.
Lev clucked his tongue. 'They tell the truth only as the exception. Zola wrote that the mendacity of the press could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times, speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary.'
Van got up from his chair to gather the cast-off newspapers. Lev took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'I don't mean to offend the journalists; they aren't any different from other people. They're merely the megaphones of the other people. — Barbara Kingsolver

Beneath the uniformity that unites us in communication there is a chaotic personal diversity of connections, and, for each of us, the connections continue to evolve. No two of us learn our language alike, nor, in a sense, does any finish learning it while he lives. — Willard Van Orman Quine

I don't understand this phrase 'I've paid my dues.' We didn't have any money and lived on peanut butter and jelly, and I loved it. I don't regret any of it. We never expected to make it this far, but we worked hard to get here. — Ronnie Van Zant

That, he said as he kissed her nose.Is a shame.You should be told you're beautiful every day.Because every day it's true, and every time i see you ,you grow in your beauty.Just because people don't say the words, doesn't mean its any less true,Kace. — Rachel Van Dyken

But society is ignorant and venomous, devoid of any trace of insight or understanding. It exalts knavery, and worships stupidity. It crucifies the intelligent, and puts the diseased in dungeons. — S. S. Van Dine

Today we have badminton set up, as well as a hike around the grounds, and trivia questions in the evening. Any questions?"
"When did we sign up for the senior citizen cruise?" Christian ridiculed. — Rachel Van Dyken

When the ANSI C standard was under development, the pragma directive was introduced. Borrowed from Ada, #pragma is used to convey hints to the compiler, such as the desire to expand a particular function in-line or suppress range checks. Not previously seen in C, pragma met with some initial resistance from a gcc implementor, who took the "implementation-defined" effect very literally - in gcc version 1.34, the use of pragma causes the compiler to stop compiling and launch a computer game instead! The gcc manual contained the following: The "#pragma" command is specified in the ANSI standard to have an arbitrary implementation-defined effect. In the GNU C preprocessor, "#pragma" first attempts to run the game "rogue"; if that fails, it tries to run the game "hack"; if that fails, it tries to run GNU Emacs displaying the Tower of Hanoi; if that fails, it reports a fatal error. In any case, preprocessing does not continue. - Manual for version 1.34 of the GNU C compiler — Peter Van Der Linden

If I or any other black can deliver at the box office, I'll get a lot of work. Too many young actors, regardless of their color, try to play an attitude on camera and fail to remember their job is to fit into an entertainment. — Mario Van Peebles

The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back. — Abigail Van Buren

I wasn't sure I wanted a love interest for Alexander. The thought of being jealous of a character in a book was silly, but I couldn't help it. Alexander Banks was the closest to perfection
that any guy could ever be. — Allison Van Diepen

You know, any sane magician would never reveal his method of deception. And I don't think that a sensible musician would either. — Van Dyke Parks

I am either blessed or cursed with having little barrier between feeling emotions and displaying them for all to see. My heart is on my sleeve. It's not comfortable but ... I am an artist so it's useful and my friends are used to me getting teary at any moment. — Kristin Bauer Van Straten

Mma Ramotswe found it difficult to imagine what it would be like to have no people. There were, she knew, those who had no others in this life, who had no uncles, or aunts, or distant cousins of any degree; people who were just themselves. Many white people were like that, for some unfathomable reason; they did not seem to want to have people and were happy to be just themselves. How lonely they must be
like spacemen deep in space, floating in darkness, but without even that silver, unfurling cord that linked the astronauts to their little metal womb of oxygen and warmth. For a moment, she indulged the metaphor, and imagined the tiny white van in space, slowly spinning against a background of stars and she, Mma Ramotswe, of the No. 1 Ladies' Space Agency, floating weightless, head over heels, tied to the tiny white van with a thin washing line. — Alexander McCall Smith

A natural right in the strict sense is that which is naturally under a person's control, his body with its faculties of movement, feeling, thought, and speech. By extension, a natural right is what a person brings under his control without violating any other person's natural rights. — Frank Van Dun

Anyone could buy a green Jaguar, find beauty in a Japanese screen two thousand years old. I would rather be a connoisseur of neglected rivers and flowering mustard and the flush of iridescent pink on an intersection pigeon's charcoal neck. I thought of the vet, warming dinner over a can, and the old woman feeding her pigeons in the intersection behind the Kentucky Fried Chicken. And what about the ladybug man, the blue of his eyes over gray threaded black? There were me and Yvonne, Niki and Paul Trout, maybe even Sergei or Susan D. Valeris, why not? What were any of us but a handful of weeds. Who was to say what our value was? What was the value of four Vietnam vets playing poker every afternoon in front of the Spanish market on Glendale Boulevard, making their moves with a greasy deck missing a queen and a five? Maybe the world depended on them, maybe they were the Fates, or the Graces. Cezanne would have drawn them in charcoal. Van Gogh would have painted himself among them. — Janet Fitch

If I knew my friends, they weren't going to make these last eleven days easy. They wanted to win their damn bets, and they wanted me to finally get my head out of my ass, by any means possible. I was pretty confident they didn't really think any sort of law applied to them, and the thought of prison clearly wasn't a deterrent if our past circumstances were any indication. Milo — Rachel Van Dyken

Scientific method is the way to truth, but it affords, even in
principle, no unique definition of truth. Any so-called pragmatic
definition of truth is doomed to failure equally. — Willard Van Orman Quine

However, traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.

The more people try to push away and ignore internal warning signs, the more likely they are to take over and leave them bewildered, confused, and ashamed. People who cannot comfortably notice what is going on inside become vulnerable to respond to any sensory shift either by shutting down or by going into a panic - they develop a fear of fear itself. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily. — Vincent Van Gogh

There are those, of course, who deny that they need any form of authority. They are the popular atheists and agnostics. Such men say that they must be shown by 'reason' whatever they are to accept as true. But the great thinkers among non-Christian men have taken no such position. They know that they cannot cover the whole area of reality with their knowledge. — Cornelius Van Til

A talib fires three shots at point-blank range at three girls in a van and doesn't kill any of them. This seems an unlikely story. — Malala Yousafzai

I don't recall having any self-awareness about the intricacy of my stories. — A.E. Van Vogt

These days I don't look to other people with the objective of trying to steal their licks, although I've got no objections to stealing them if that seems like a good idea. I'm sure that I'm still influenced by Mark Knopfler and Eddie Van Halen as well ... I can't play like Eddie Van Halen. I wish I could. I sat down to try some of those ideas and can't do it. I don't know if I could ever get any of that stuff together. Sometimes I think I should work at the guitar more. — David Gilmour

of making the Grand Fleet turn away and open the range. Admiral Scheer claims that putting the van of his fleet again into action "diverted the enemy fire and rendered it possible for the torpedo-boat flotillas to take so effective a share in the proceedings," (S) but of course it is a question whether the same result might not have been obtained' by the use of the torpedo flotillas alone. In any case, it must be acknowledged that Admiral Scheer's extraordinary manoeuvres had accomplished a surprise effect upon his enemy as, besides forcing the Grand Fleet to turn away, the moral effect of this torpedo attack had a great influence upon the British conduct of the rest of the action. It is also evident that the British had not comprehended — Thomas Goddard Frothingham

Like most geniuses, the Countess was a very limited person. Sigmund Freud was so ignorant of the art that Surrealist painters had to explain then- use of Freudian symbols over and over again, and he still didn't get it. Einstein never could remember to take the biscuits out of oven. Those same forces that drive a genius to create things or ideas that entertain or enlighten us often gobble so much of his personality that he has none left for the social graces (Should you invite Van Gogh to your home he might stand on your sofa in his muddy boots and pee where he pleased), and the very act of creation requires such focused concentration that vast areas of knowledge may be completely overlooked. Well, so what? There is no evidence that generalized skills are in any way superior to specialized brilliance, and certainly that sputter less little candle. Same of the mediocre mind known as "common sense" has never produced anything worth celebrating. — Tom Robbins

I distinctly remember a conversation with my band in the van where I was having a complete meltdown. It was 1984, I think, and I was huddled in the back corner of our van and saying, "I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this." I didn't want to play any more shows. I just wanted to stop. — Michael Stipe

The photographer from the magazine, Masao Kageyama, would ride along in the van that accompanied me. He'd take pictures as they drove along. It wasn't a real race, and there weren't any water stations, so I'd occasionally stop to get water from the van. The Greek summer is truly brutal, and I knew I'd have to be careful not to get dehydrated.
"Mr. Murakami," Mr. Kageyama said, surprised as he saw me getting ready to run, "you're not really thinking of running the whole route, are you?"
"Of course I am. That's why I came here."
"Really? But when we do these kinds of projects most people don't go all the way. We just take some photos, and most of them don't finish the whole route. So you really are going to run the
entire thing?"
Sometimes the world baffles me. I can't believe that people would really do things like that. — Haruki Murakami

I love challenges. If you don't have any and can do whatever you want. Then it's probably time to die. — Jean-Claude Van Damme

An ordinary kitten will ask more questions than any five-year-old. — Carl Van Vechten

Read non-fiction. History, biology, entomology, mineralogy, paleontology. Get a bodyguard and do fieldwork. Find your inner fish. Don't publish too soon. Not before you have read Thomas Mann in any case. Learn by copying, sentence by sentence some of the masters. Copy Coetzee's or Sebald's sentences and see what happens to your story. Consider creative non-fiction if you want to stay in South Africa. It might be the way to go. Never neglect back and hamstring exercises, otherwise you won't be able to write your novel. One needs one's buttocks to think. — Marlene Van Niekerk

The easiest approach to any strong color is to use a lot of it, thus unifying a room. However, beware of too many strong colors unless you happen to like living on a battlefield. — Van Day Truex

And Dirk van Dyck the Dutchman realized that he never had been, and never would be, as proud of any child as he was of his elegant little Indian daughter at that moment. — Edward Rutherfurd

It's a curious thing. I suppose most people think of artists as impatient but I don't know of any first-rate artist who hasn't manifested in his career an appalling patience, a willingness to wait and to do his best now in the expectation that next year he will do better. — Mark Van Doren

I walked up the ramp and stood in the van, trying to decide where to begin my inspection of the concealed words whose bones were molded together by men to make either an awesome vision of truth that would guard any door of the mind, or a creature that would stand for a while, deceptively whole, then collapse, scattering across the threshold the dry dead bones that did not even burst into flame at their friction one with the other. — Janet Frame

I've made peace with insecurity ... because there is no security of any kind. — Dick Van Dyke

We were hockey gypsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, plowing into the heart of that magnificent northern landscape. We never gave a thought to being deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game and the brotherhood that bound us together off the ice, in the van, on the plank floors of reservation houses, in the truck stop diners where if we'd won we had a little to splurge on a burger and soup before we hit the road again. Small joys. All of them tied together, entwined to form an experience we would not have traded for any other. We were a league of nomads, mad for the game, mad for the road, mad for ice and snow, an Arctic wind on our faces and a frozen puck on the blade of our sticks. — Richard Wagamese

Often I have found that the one thing that can save is the thing which appears most to threaten ... one has to go down into what one most fears and in that process ... comes a saving flicker of light and energy that, even if it does not produce the courage of a hero, at any rate enables a trembling mortal to take one step further. — Laurens Van Der Post

Often, I can scarcely hear any one speaking to me; the tones yes, but not the actual words; yet as soon as any one shouts, it is unbearable. What will come of all this, heaven only knows! — Ludwig Van Beethoven

His joy was somewhat sullied by immediate awareness that his brother did not fully share it . . . in truth, he seemed more distressed than was possible save in one about to discorporate because of some shameful lack or failure. But Smith had already learned that these creatures, so much like himself in some ways, could endure emotions dreadful to contemplate and still not die. His Brother Mahmoud underwent a spiritual agony five times daily and not only did not die but had urged the agony on him as a needful thing. His Brother Captain van Tromp suffered terrifying spasms unpredictably, any one of which should have, by Smith's standards, produced immediate discorporation to end the conflict - yet that brother was still corporate so far as he knew. — Robert A. Heinlein

A species in which everyone was General Patton would not succeed, any more than would a race in which everyone was Vincent van Gogh. I prefer to think that the planet needs athletes, philosophers, sex symbols, painters, scientists; it needs the warmhearted, the hardhearted, the coldhearted, and the weakhearted. It needs those who can devote their lives to studying how many droplets of water are secreted by the salivary glands of dogs under which circumstances, and it needs those who can capture the passing impression of cherry blossoms in a fourteen-syllable poem or devote twenty-five pages to the dissection of a small boy's feelings as he lies in bed in the dark waiting for his mother to kiss him goodnight... — Allen Shawn

You know, most people, they want to go to Hollywood. They want to be a star. They want to be a rock star. That thought never entered any of our minds, the Van Halen family. — Eddie Van Halen

Sometimes, to stimulate your imagination you have to be careful you don't have too much information. You can Google something, and it's in your face, pow! You don't have time to dream any more about it. — Dries Van Noten

Sometimes I ask myself if there's any limit to the harm people can do to each other." "No, — Kim Van Alkemade

If you insist on reducing it to its basic elements, it's the sure and simple knowledge that there's something more out there, something greater than yourself, than mankind: a grand plan, a design that can't be comprehended by you or by any other human being, because it is numinous, it is God's design, something only He can fathom. — Eric Van Lustbader