Genius is no more than childhood recaptured at will, childhood equipped now with man’s physical means to express itself, and with the analytical mind that enables it to bring order into the sum of experience, involuntarily amassed.
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867), French poet

Dolly Parton and her views on cosmetic surgery:

If I have one more facelift, I’ll have a beard!

If I see something sagging, bagging and dragging, I’m going to nip it, tuck it, and suck it!

It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.

I had now learned that opportunity, when seemingly lost, is often at its ripest moment.
Sylvia, Bryce Courtenay

Sylvia by Bryce Courtenay

I am Sylvia Honeyeater; I think myself born around 1196, and this is the story of my life. I am cursed by folk as an optimist and a dreamer, which is a dangerous combination.

Lewis’s first impression of Tolkien was favorable, but not overwhelmingly so. Lewis wrote in his diary after one of his initial contacts with Tolkien -

No harm in him: only needs a smack or so.
(quoted by Carpenter, The Inklings, p. 23)

Source: http://www.tolkien-online.com/inklings.html

If I practised sex, out of moral conviction, that was one thing; but to enjoy it … seemed a defeat. I accompanied men and was accompanied in action, in the extrovert part of life; I plunged into that … but not sex; that seemed to be their delight and all I got was a pleasure of being wanted, I suppose, and the tenderness (not nearly enough) that a man gives when he is satisfied. I daresay I was the worst bed partner in five continents.
Martha Gellhorn