Self-conceit may lead to self-destruction. — Aesop

"Appearances often are deceiving."

"Do not count your chickens before they are hatched."

"Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties."

"The fly sat upon the axel-tree of the chariot-wheel and said, What a dust do I raise!"

"I am sure the grapes are sour."

"Beware the wolf in sheeps clothing."

"At one point a heated discussion arose over the possible interpretation of Lolita as a grandiose metaphor of the classic Europeans hopeless love for young, seductive, barbaric America. In his afterword to the novel Nabokov himself mentions this as the naive theory of one of the publishers who turned the book down. And although there cant be the slightest doubt that Nabokov did not mean to limit Lolita to that interpretation, there is no reason to exclude it as one of the novels many dimensions. The point, I felt, became obvious when one drew the line between Lolita as a delightfully frivolous story on the verge of pornography and Lolita as a literary masterpiece, the only convincing love story of our century."

"[explaining to Ernie how April apologized to him] She just showed up at the factory, took off her coat, and begged me to take her. We made love in a way that Ive only ever seen in nature films."

"Love is always love, come whence it may. A heart that beats at your approach, an eye that weeps when you go away are things so rare, so sweet, so precious that they must never be despised."

"Well buy a lot of clothes, but we dont really need em Things we buy to cover up whats inside Cause they made us hate ourself and love their wealth."

"In just the last few months Sharon was beginning to come into her own. She never cared about being beautiful. She never even really cared about acting. She just wanted to love and be loved. And have her baby. I know that if shed lived and had the baby everything would have been different for her. Because that is what Sharon really wanted. She was just a little girl from Texas who was so incredibly beautiful that she got swept up in all of the Hollywood nonsense. But all she ever wanted was what every woman wants — a man to love and a baby of her own. I cant believe that the murderers knew her. To know Sharon, to really know her, was to love her. There is just no way that anyone who knew her could have hurt her so."

"Alliance does not mean love, any more than war means hate."