'What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing.' -Stephen King

In Danse Macabre, the most prolific and celebrated horror writer in the English language surveys the horror genre as a fan. He examines everything from horror films to novels to comic books, and radio and television.

He also examines the genre's four prominent archetypes: Dracula, Jeckyll & Hyde, Frankenstein, and the Ghost. King, like the teacher he once was, manages to tie a thread between these four archetypes and virtually the entire modern horror genre.

'Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.' -Voltaire

Voltaire spent his early 20s quietly defying his father's desire to see him become a lawyer, instead spending his time doing what he enjoyed -- writing and falling in love, both of which consistently got him into trouble.

When a French nobleman got him exiled to England merely for offending him, Voltaire had discovered his calling: to reform the heavily corrupt French judicial system.

'Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet them on your way down.' -Wilson Mizner

Wilson Mizner was an American original. In 1897, he and his brother went to Alaska for the gold rush, but instead they mostly robbed people, including Sid Grauman (later of Grauman's Chinese Theater), and later Wilson formed a lifelong friendship with Wyatt Earp. He then moved to New York, married a millionaire widow, and managed boxers, one of whom died. Then he got addicted to opium and joined his brother in Florida, where they fleeced wealthy landowners before skipping town. Wilson landed in Hollywood, where he worked on some films as well as bought into and managed the famous Brown Derby restaurant.

The Stephen Sondheim musical Bounce is based on the adventures of Wilson and his brother.

'Nagging is the repetition of unpalatable truths.' -Edith Summerskill

20th-century British Labour politician Baroness Summerskill was one of the early proponents of equal rights for women in England, serving the government in a variety of offices, including in the House of Commons and the Ministry of Food.

She was also a trained physician and, in founding the Socialist Health Association, was influential in establishing the UK's current health care system, the National Health Service, in 1948.

'Of all sexual aberrations, perhaps the most curious is chastity.' -Remy de Gourmont

French critic, poet and novelist Remy de Gourmont enjoyed both popularity and respect in his time (at the turn of the 20th century), serving as an influential critic of both T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. Yet his greatest influence was on Swiss novelist Blaise Cendrars, who would lose an arm during World War I and go on to be associated with Picasso, Hemingway, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, and others of the so-called "Lost Generation" in 1920s Paris.

'Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.' -Leonardo da Vinci

Painter, sculptor, scientist, architect, musician, engineer, inventor -- in a time when the term "genius" gets attached to anyone with a reasonable idea, da Vinci himself remains synonymous with the term, and for good reason: It is probable that history has not produced a more brilliant or talented individual with a more diverse and unlimited imagination.

His notebooks, which are the origins of this quote, are written largely in mirror-image cursive, believed by many to be an effort to protect the multitude of ideas he sketched onto those pages.

'Love goes unappreciated a lot of times, but you still gotta keep giving it.' -Snoop Dogg

Although he long ago became mainstream and is known for taking an active role in the lives of his kids, Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr., better known as Snoop Dogg, continues to have legal issues. Now, though, instead of getting arrested in and around Long Beach, California, Snoop's rap sheet is global, as he has been arrested for a variety of reasons in England, Sweden and Australia.

And despite having endorsed numerous products, having had his own reality show on E! and even having appeared on the longtime soap opera One Life to Live, he somehow manages to retain his street credibility.

'Advertising may be described as the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to get money from it.' -Stephen Leacock

Canadian writer and economist Stephen Leacock became famous in the early 20th century as a humorist whose writings -- short stories, humor, novels -- were widely read across the English-speaking world. The fame eclipsed some of his more serious academic work in economics and political theory, even though he was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal for achievement in critical literature in 1937.

'A smile is the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities.' -Herman Melville

From the 19th century American author's lesser-known novel Pierre or The Ambiguities, and it's lesser known for a reason, being Melville's major literary disaster, both financially and critically. The novel followed his magnum opus Moby Dick, but more than one critic has suggested that the reason the book was so disastrous is because Pierre is Melville's attempt to come to terms with his repressed homosexuality. Despite the lack of evidence, these same critics attempt to read that into a number of his works.

'A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.' -Alexander Pope

This sentiment, expressed by one of England's greatest poets, is certainly perceptive enough: Admitting to a mistake isn't an example of your stupidity, but a testament to your intelligence.

Nonetheless, it lacks the infectious wit and economy that have entrenched so many of Pope's lines that are now so deep within the cultural vernacular that they're practically proverbial, including "A little learning is a dang'rous thing," "To err is human, to forgive, divine" and "For fools rush in where angels fear to tread."