"I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded;
not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain
gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away
in the middle of the night."
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
"All that is gold does not glitter, not all those
who wander are lost. The old that is strong does
not wither, deep roots are not reached by the
frost. From the ashes a fire shall we woken,
a light from the shadows shall spring. Renewed
shall be blade that was broken, the crownless
again shall be kind."
The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
"A mile-high man could catch and
cup her among the falling stars."
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace
"I loved something I made up, something that's
just as dead as Melly is. I made a pretty suit of
clothes and fell in love with it. And when Ashley
came riding along, so handsome, so different, I
put that suit on him and made him wear it, whether
it fitted him or not. And I wouldn't see what he
really was. I kept on loving the pretty clothes -
and not him at all."
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
"You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in
every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough
common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You
have been in every prospect I have ever seen since - on the river,
on the sails of the ships, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods,
in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every
graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The
stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are
not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than
your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere,
and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but
remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of
the evil."
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
"All human beings search for either reasons
to be good, or excuses to be bad."
Tell-All, Chuck Palahniuk
"He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all
to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven
would only be half alive; and he said mine would be drunk. I
said I should fall asleep in his and he said he could not
breathe in mine."
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
"I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms
around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex.
Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked
the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky. And she was
gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating.
So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking
that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane."
Looking for Alaska, John Green
"I am so tired of feeling like a shattered
vase across a slippery floor and I am so
tired of watching you tip toe around the
pieces so you do not cut yourself on me."
Typewriter Series #210, Tyler Knott Gregson
"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage
to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for
sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they
are often wounded, sometimes destroyed."
Ernest Hemingway
"The expression 'following suit' is a curious one, because it has nothing
to do with walking behind a matching set of clothing. If you follow suit, it
means you do the same thing somebody else has just done. If all of your
friends decided to jump off a bridge into the icy waters of an ocean or river,
for instance, and you jumped in after them, you would be following suit. You
can see why following suit can be a dangerous thing to do, because you
could end up drowning simply because somebody else thought of it first."
The Austere Academy, Lemony Snicket
"One s loved because one is loved.
No reason is needed for loving."
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
"Last year when my grandma fell and broke her hip, she couldn't
paint her toenails anymore. So my grandma started doing it for
her, even after he fell and broke his hip, too. For me, that's love."
The 19th Wife, David Ebershoff
"I don't put up with being messed around and
I don't suffer fools gladly. The short version of
that is that I'm a bitch. Trust me, I can provide
character references."
Sunshine, Robin McKinely
"Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate
I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are
because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I
can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and
difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so
that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time,
not moving. Depression is all about: if you loved me, you would."
Prozac Nation Elizabeth Wurtzel
"It is a curious thought, but it is only when you
see people looking ridiculous that you realize
just how much you love them."
An Autobiography, Agatha Christie
"Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one
thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and
if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore."
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
"It's clear to me now that I have been
moving toward you and you toward me
for a long time. Though neither of us was
aware of the other before we met, there
was a kind of mindless certainty bumming
blithely along beneath our ignorance that
ensured we would come together. Like two
solitary birds flying the great prairies by
celestial reckoning, all of these years and
lifetimes we have been moving toward one
another."
The Bridges of Madison County, Robert James Waller
" 'There are two kinds of men,' said Ka, in a didatic voice. 'The first
kind does not fall in love until he's seen how the girl eats a sandwich,
how she combs her hair, what sort of nonsense she cares about, why
she's angry at her father, and what sort of stories people tell about
her. The second type of man - and I am in this category - can fall in love
with a woman only if he knows next to nothing about her.' "
Snow, Orhan Pamuk
"It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore
it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are
right: love is eternal."
A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
"There are things that have to be forgotten
if you want to go on living."
The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want
real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
"Remember, the time you
feel lonely is the time you
most need to be by yourself.
Life's cruelest irony."
Shampoo Planet, Douglas Coupland
"Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time,
not just love but be in love with, is the one who will
always make you angry, the one you can't be
logical about."
The Passion, Jeanette Winterson
"I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But
I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were
lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because
he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws
were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together."
Blue-Eyed Devil, Lisa Kleypas
go
go
not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain
gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away
in the middle of the night."
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
"All that is gold does not glitter, not all those
who wander are lost. The old that is strong does
not wither, deep roots are not reached by the
frost. From the ashes a fire shall we woken,
a light from the shadows shall spring. Renewed
shall be blade that was broken, the crownless
again shall be kind."
The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
"A mile-high man could catch and
cup her among the falling stars."
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace
"I loved something I made up, something that's
just as dead as Melly is. I made a pretty suit of
clothes and fell in love with it. And when Ashley
came riding along, so handsome, so different, I
put that suit on him and made him wear it, whether
it fitted him or not. And I wouldn't see what he
really was. I kept on loving the pretty clothes -
and not him at all."
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
"You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in
every line I have ever read, since I first came here, the rough
common boy whose poor heart you wounded even then. You
have been in every prospect I have ever seen since - on the river,
on the sails of the ships, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods,
in the sea, in the streets. You have been the embodiment of every
graceful fancy that my mind has ever become acquainted with. The
stones of which the strongest London buildings are made, are
not more real, or more impossible to displace with your hands, than
your presence and influence have been to me, there and everywhere,
and will be. Estella, to the last hour of my life, you cannot choose but
remain part of my character, part of the little good in me, part of
the evil."
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
"All human beings search for either reasons
to be good, or excuses to be bad."
Tell-All, Chuck Palahniuk
"He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all
to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven
would only be half alive; and he said mine would be drunk. I
said I should fall asleep in his and he said he could not
breathe in mine."
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
"I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms
around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex.
Just sleep together in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked
the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky. And she was
gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating.
So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking
that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane."
Looking for Alaska, John Green
"I am so tired of feeling like a shattered
vase across a slippery floor and I am so
tired of watching you tip toe around the
pieces so you do not cut yourself on me."
Typewriter Series #210, Tyler Knott Gregson
"The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage
to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for
sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they
are often wounded, sometimes destroyed."
Ernest Hemingway
"The expression 'following suit' is a curious one, because it has nothing
to do with walking behind a matching set of clothing. If you follow suit, it
means you do the same thing somebody else has just done. If all of your
friends decided to jump off a bridge into the icy waters of an ocean or river,
for instance, and you jumped in after them, you would be following suit. You
can see why following suit can be a dangerous thing to do, because you
could end up drowning simply because somebody else thought of it first."
The Austere Academy, Lemony Snicket
"One s loved because one is loved.
No reason is needed for loving."
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
"Last year when my grandma fell and broke her hip, she couldn't
paint her toenails anymore. So my grandma started doing it for
her, even after he fell and broke his hip, too. For me, that's love."
The 19th Wife, David Ebershoff
"I don't put up with being messed around and
I don't suffer fools gladly. The short version of
that is that I'm a bitch. Trust me, I can provide
character references."
Sunshine, Robin McKinely
"Some friends don't understand this. They don't understand how desperate
I am to have someone say, I love you and I support you just the way you are
because you're wonderful just the way you are. They don't understand that I
can't remember anyone ever saying that to me. I am so demanding and
difficult for my friends because I want to crumble and fall apart before them so
that they will love me even though I am no fun, lying in bed, crying all the time,
not moving. Depression is all about: if you loved me, you would."
Prozac Nation Elizabeth Wurtzel
"It is a curious thought, but it is only when you
see people looking ridiculous that you realize
just how much you love them."
An Autobiography, Agatha Christie
"Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one
thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and
if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore."
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
"It's clear to me now that I have been
moving toward you and you toward me
for a long time. Though neither of us was
aware of the other before we met, there
was a kind of mindless certainty bumming
blithely along beneath our ignorance that
ensured we would come together. Like two
solitary birds flying the great prairies by
celestial reckoning, all of these years and
lifetimes we have been moving toward one
another."
The Bridges of Madison County, Robert James Waller
" 'There are two kinds of men,' said Ka, in a didatic voice. 'The first
kind does not fall in love until he's seen how the girl eats a sandwich,
how she combs her hair, what sort of nonsense she cares about, why
she's angry at her father, and what sort of stories people tell about
her. The second type of man - and I am in this category - can fall in love
with a woman only if he knows next to nothing about her.' "
Snow, Orhan Pamuk
"It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore
it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are
right: love is eternal."
A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
"There are things that have to be forgotten
if you want to go on living."
The Killer Inside Me, Jim Thompson
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want
real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
"Remember, the time you
feel lonely is the time you
most need to be by yourself.
Life's cruelest irony."
Shampoo Planet, Douglas Coupland
"Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time,
not just love but be in love with, is the one who will
always make you angry, the one you can't be
logical about."
The Passion, Jeanette Winterson
"I no longer believed in the idea of soul mates, or love at first sight. But
I was beginning to believe that a very few times in your life, if you were
lucky, you might meet someone who was exactly right for you. Not because
he was perfect, or because you were, but because your combined flaws
were arranged in a way that allowed two separate beings to hinge together."
Blue-Eyed Devil, Lisa Kleypas
go
go
"But who say can say what's best? That's
why you need to grab whatever chance you
have of happiness where you find it, and
not worry about other people too much. My
experience tells me that we get no more than
two or three such chances in a life time, and
if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of
our lives."
Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter
how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful,
stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe."
A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
"He had learned the worst lesson that
life can teach -that it makes no sense."
American Pastoral, Philip Roth
"What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone
important in my life? I think that's what scares me: the
randomness of everything. That the people who could be
important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them
by. How do you know...I felt that by walking away I was
abandoning [them], that I spent my entire life, day after day,
abandoning people."
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, Peter Cameron
"I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and
where all your yesterdays are buried deep - leave it any way except a slow way,
leave it the fastest way you can."
West with the Night, Beryl Markham
"I want to be the kind of person who can do that. Move on
and forgive people and be healthy and happy. It seems like
an easy thing to do in my head. But it's not so easy when you
try it in real life."
Waiting for You, Susane Colasanti
"I meet a person, and
in my mind I'm saying
three minutes; I give you
three minutes to show
me the spark."
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, Amy Hempel
" 'That proves you are unusual,' returned the Scarecrow; 'and I am
convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world
are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a
tree, and live and die unnoticed.' "
The Land of Oz, L. Frank Baum
"It seemed like someone was always leaving
someone, like that's the way the world worked-
people were born and people died, people left
and people came. It was like the world was
saying you can't have everything you want at the
same time."
Lena, Jacqueline Woodson
"I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't.
Sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence
isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much..
so, so much."
Maizon at Blue Hill, Jacqueline Woodson
"If by now you're a little confused, don't be too
hard on yourself. Life is confusing, and anyone
who claims that she has all the answers has
probably uncovered the wrong ones."
Inside the Shadow City, Kristen Miller
"I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain
of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or
stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed
it's beauty to them."
Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
"Fear both the heat and the cold
of your heart, and try to have patience,
if you can."
Unfinished Tales, J.R.R. Tolkien
"I never left you; I never
will leave you. While life
lasts, and beyond, I am here."
Lady of Avalon, Marion Zimmer B
why you need to grab whatever chance you
have of happiness where you find it, and
not worry about other people too much. My
experience tells me that we get no more than
two or three such chances in a life time, and
if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of
our lives."
Norwegian Wood, Haruki Murakami
"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter
how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful,
stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe."
A Game of You, Neil Gaiman
"He had learned the worst lesson that
life can teach -that it makes no sense."
American Pastoral, Philip Roth
"What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone
important in my life? I think that's what scares me: the
randomness of everything. That the people who could be
important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them
by. How do you know...I felt that by walking away I was
abandoning [them], that I spent my entire life, day after day,
abandoning people."
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, Peter Cameron
"I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and
where all your yesterdays are buried deep - leave it any way except a slow way,
leave it the fastest way you can."
West with the Night, Beryl Markham
"I want to be the kind of person who can do that. Move on
and forgive people and be healthy and happy. It seems like
an easy thing to do in my head. But it's not so easy when you
try it in real life."
Waiting for You, Susane Colasanti
"I meet a person, and
in my mind I'm saying
three minutes; I give you
three minutes to show
me the spark."
The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, Amy Hempel
" 'That proves you are unusual,' returned the Scarecrow; 'and I am
convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world
are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a
tree, and live and die unnoticed.' "
The Land of Oz, L. Frank Baum
"It seemed like someone was always leaving
someone, like that's the way the world worked-
people were born and people died, people left
and people came. It was like the world was
saying you can't have everything you want at the
same time."
Lena, Jacqueline Woodson
"I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't.
Sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence
isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much..
so, so much."
Maizon at Blue Hill, Jacqueline Woodson
"If by now you're a little confused, don't be too
hard on yourself. Life is confusing, and anyone
who claims that she has all the answers has
probably uncovered the wrong ones."
Inside the Shadow City, Kristen Miller
"I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain
of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or
stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed
it's beauty to them."
Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
"Fear both the heat and the cold
of your heart, and try to have patience,
if you can."
Unfinished Tales, J.R.R. Tolkien
"I never left you; I never
will leave you. While life
lasts, and beyond, I am here."
Lady of Avalon, Marion Zimmer B