Mara

“English, however, is kinky. It has a predilection for dressing up like Welsh on lonely nights.”
― John McWhorter, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English

“People pontificate, "Suicide is selfishness." Career churchmen like Pater go a step further and call in a cowardly assault on the living. Oafs argue this specious line for varying reason: to evade fingers of blame, to impress one's audience with one's mental fiber, to vent anger, or just because one lacks the necessary suffering to sympathize. Cowardice is nothing to do with it - suicide takes considerable courage. Japanese have the right idea. No, what's selfish is to demand another to endure an intolerable existence, just to spare families, friends, and enemies a bit of soul-searching.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

“Prescriptive grammar has spread linguistic insecurity like a plague among English speakers for centuries, numbs us to the aesthetic richness of non-standard speech, and distracts us from attending to genuine issues of linguistic style in writing.”
― John H. McWhorter, Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of "Pure" Standard English

“Love has, at its best, made the inherent sadness of life bearable, and its beauty manifest.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness