Tennis great Andre Agassi, a 9th grade dropout, created one of America's best preparatory schools: http://www.agassiprep.org

"'Twas I, but ’tis not I. I do not shame
To tell you what I was, since my conversion
So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am."

- Shakespeare, As YouLike It

"No matter where you are in life there's always more journey ahead."
- Nelson Mandela

"If people in your life aren't uncomfortable, you're not really writing. You're not really hitting it. Somebody in your life should be uncomfortable."
- Chris Rock quoting Quentin Tarantino

individuality

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

"... we're like blocks of stone, out of which the sculptor carves the forms of men. The blows of His chisel, which hurt so much, are what makes us perfect." 
- C.S. Lewis

"How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable,

Seem to me all the uses of this world!"

- Shakespeare in Hamlet Act 1, Scene 2

axiom

"Winners never quit and quitters never win."
- Ted Turner who lost $10 million per day over three years, but who now owns about two million acres of land, which is greater than the land areas of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. Turner's land has a higher GDP than Belize.  

"I know when I’m picking up momentum. I just know it. I just know when I’m around the right people, that things are going to start to work for me."

- Kevin Costner

"I love London; it's like Europe but in English."
- Matt LeBlanc quoting his producer

"Most history is made by young people."
- Niall Ferguson

In 1644 the last Ming Emperor, Chongzhen, hanged himself in shame. 

"Rejoice when people die; mourn when they're born."
- Gregg Allman's Bible interpretation

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know."
-Ernest Hemingway

a place to eat in D.C.

http://www.benschilibowl.com

advice

"Stay focused and do what you do well."
- Steve Jobs to Larry Page

modus operandi

"All standups are innately insecure. Who would stand on a stage by themselves and say: 'Laugh!' 'Laugh with me!' 'Laugh at me!' 'I don't care: Just laugh!' They're all very damaged. They need that reassurance; it's all a cover."
- Melissa Rivers

"The wider world perceives fashion sometimes as frivolity that should be done away with in the face of social upheavals. The problems are enormous. The point is in fact that fashion is the armour to survive the reality of everyday life. I don't think you could do away with it. It'd be like doing away with civilization."
- Bill Cunningham, octogenarian New York Times photographer

crackleure

Photo source here.

"He was forty years older than me, but he exuded life."
- Françoise Gilot who married Picasso when she was twenty-two and he was sixty-two

Portrait by Henry Lamb

"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there."
- L. P. Hartley

“Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it. Myself included.”

- Pablo Picasso

portrait of an unknown man

Diego Velázquez, 17th Century

Image source here.

"O, I could weep. My spirit from mine eyes!"
- Shakespeare 

a place to buy shoes in London

http://www.gjcleverley.co.uk

How to make a Black Velvet here.

Johnny Carson's diet included Vodka and unfiltered Pall Mall cigarettes; he lived to the age of 79.

"All Scotland needs is a good roof."
- Sean Connery

love your enemies

“Critics are our friends, they show us our faults.” 
- Benjamin Franklin