Sellew Quotes & Sayings

It's worth pointing out that [Herman Melville] worked in [the New York Custom House] as a deputy customs inspector between 1866 and 1885. Nineteen years, and he never got a raise - four dollars a day, six days a week. He was by then a washed-up writer, forgotten and poor. I used to find this subject heartbreaking, a waste: the greatest living American author was forced to spend his days writing tariff reports instead of novels. But now, knowing what I know about the sleaze of the New York Custom House, and the honorable if bitter decency with which Melville did his job, I have come to regard literature's loss as the republic's gain. Great writers are a dime a dozen in New York. But an honest customs inspector in the Gilded Age? Unheard of. — Sarah Vowell

I've been acting for 25 years, living out of suitcases on theater tours or film locations. — Alfred Molina

It is good for a man to invite his ghosts into his warm interior, out of the wild night, into the firelight, out of the howling dark. — A.S. Byatt

Success is the end product. — Lailah Gifty Akita

For some strange reason we don't go to charming, light movies anymore. People expect a movie to be heavy and turgid, like "American Beauty." We've become a heavy-handed society. — Pauline Kael

I walked him to the door. "Is there anything else you want me to do? Check your mail? Water your plants?"
"My mail is being forwarded to my lawyer. And I'm watering my own plants."
"So, you feel safe in the Batcave?" The corners of his mouth curved into the hint of a smile. He leaned forward and kissed me at the base of my neck, just above my T-shirt collar.
"Sweet dreams." Before he left, he said good-night to Grandma, who was still in the kitchen.
"What a nice, polite young man," Grandma said. "And he's got an excellent package."
I went straight to her closet, found the bottle of booze, and dumped some into my cocoa. — Janet Evanovich

Human beings love stories because they safely show us beginnings, middles and ends. — A.S. Byatt

Stood there and watched and didn't do a thing to help me. — Jodee Blanco

Others? He dares to call us others? He's the other. The one who looks most American - and he's the one who is least American! The man is unfit. He shouldn't be there. He shouldn't be there, and it's as simple as that! — Philip Roth

While all living things affect the evolution of other living things simply by virtue of trying to stay alive, humans interact with the biological evolution of other species in a much more complex and powerful fashion because of one ability: language. Nothing occurs on the human scale without language. No language means no agriculture, no animal farming, no science. — Christine Kenneally

I will no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth that I hold deeply inside. I will no longer act as if I were less than the whole person I know myself inwardly to be. — Rosa Parks

Shabelsky: Doctors are the same as lawyers, the sole difference being that lawyers only rob you, but doctors rob you and kill you too ... — Anton Chekhov

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror. — Voltaire

What? It's not my fault I stab all the fanged people. They shouldn't look like Daimons. (Tabitha)
I didn't look like a Daimon, but you stabbed me. (Valerius)
Yeah, well, you looked like a lawyer so I had to kill you. It was a moral imperative. (Tabitha) — Sherrilyn Kenyon