Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
Truman Capote

If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.
Thomas Sowell

The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions.
Mike Krzyzewski

Although none of the rules for becoming more alive is valid, it is healthy to keep on formulating them.
Susan Sontag

Although spoken English doesn't obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn't know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage.
Marilyn vos Savant

There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.
Leon Trotsky

When it comes to federal elections law, Tom DeLay and his special-interest friends live by one set of rules, and everyone else lives by a very different set.
Rahm Emanuel

The problem is that once the rules of art are debunked, and once the unpleasant realities the irony diagnoses are revealed and diagnosed, "then" what do we do?
David Foster Wallace

There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.
John Kenneth Galbraith

We're a very expensive group; we break a lot of rules. It's unheard of to combine opera with a rock theme, my dear .
Freddie Mercury

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.
Richard M. Nixon

I loved writing a book in which, in some ways, it's very, very classical, and in some ways I'm breaking lots of rules about what you can do and what you can't do.
Neil Gaiman

The head never rules the heart, but just becomes its partner in crime.
Mignon McLaughlin

Today the tyrant rules not by club or fist, but disguised as a market researcher, he shepherds his flocks in the ways of utility and comfort.
Marshall McLuhan

Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.
Otto von Bismarck

All action is for the sake of some end; and rules of action, it seems natural to suppose, must take their whole character and color from the end to which they are subservient.
John Stuart Mill

Love begets love, love knows no rules, this is same for all.
Virgil

The rules of morality are not the conclusion of our reason.
David Hume

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.
Hannah Arendt

The fewer rules a coach has, the fewer rules there are for players to break.
John Madden