“I think being a mother is the cruelest thing in the world.”

“Justice could be cruel, and crueler yet necessity, but mercy was the cruelest thing of all.”

Orson Scott Card Hart's Hope

“Be what I think? But I think of being so many things!”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

“The greatest challenge I think is adjusting to not playing baseball. The reason for that is that I had to come out of baseball and come into the business world, not being a college graduate, not being educated to come into the business world the way I should have. And, instead of people doing things for me, I had to do things for myself. That was scary for me.”

Willie Mays (1931) Baseball player

“[…] even in the cruelest human being there can exist a flower of good. Maybe just the tiniest blossom, in need of water and sunlight, but a flower just the same.”

Meg Cabot book Shadowland

“I think the most important thing in the world is being brave. I'd rathe be brave than beautiful. Hell, I'd settle for acting brave.”

Amy Bloom (1953) Fiction writer, screenwriter, social worker, psychotherapist

“I put being a mother ahead of being a politician.”

Diane Abbott (1953) British Labour Party politician

“One of the cruelest things you can do to another person is pretend you care about them more than you really do.”

Douglas Coupland (1961) Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer

“You would think that a rock star being married to a super-model would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

“Perhaps the male in human society is useless. I am frank to admit that I don't know. If women are beginning to feel this way about it--and there is striking evidence at hand that they do--then we are entering upon the cruelest period of the world's history.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor