People will forget what you say but they won’t forget how you make them feel. - Maya Angelou

I took a master class with Billy Wilder once and he said that in the first act of a story you put your character up in a tree and the second act you set the tree on fire and then in the third you get him down. - Gary Kurtz

They are one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy - not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without an order, signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. If you want to get a lift from a Vogon, forget it. They are vile and ill tempered. If you want to get a drink from a Vogon, stick your finger down his throat. If you want to annoy a Vogon, feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. - Douglas Adams

Look within your fictional cultures at their day to day lives. And ask what’s important to them. Some holidays come up whole cloth out of your world’s history and cultural diversity. If it was important to their view of history, it’s important enough to have a day set aside for it, with reenactments, good food, and traditional music, dance, and acting. - Robert A. Sloan

Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours. - Erin Morgenstern

But a singular sense of impending calamity, that should indeed have served me as a warning, drove me onward. - H.G. Wells