"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut."
— Ernest Hemingway

"You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange."
— Milan Kundera

"I wouldn't exactly describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out, though."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"And when she turned around, her pretty little butt twitched so nice and all. She knocked me out. I mean it. I was half in love with her by the time we sat down. That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"I held hands with her all the time...that doesn't sound like much, I realize, but she was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hand all the time, as if they were afraid they'd bore you or something."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"Real ugly girls have it tough. I feel so sorry for them sometimes."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"If a girl looks swell when she meets you, who gives a damn if she's late?"
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you' right under your nose."
— J.D. Salinger

"Not my idea of God, but God. Not my idea of H., but H. Yes, and also not my idea of my neighbour, but my neighbour. For don't we often make this mistake as regards people who are still alive -- who are with us in the same room? Talking and acting not to the man himself but to the picture -- almost the précis -- we've made of him in our own minds? And he has to depart from it pretty widely before we even notice the fact."
— C.S. Lewis (A Grief Observed)

"One white man on the platform in South Carolina asked us where we were going--we had got off the train to get some fresh air and to dust the grit and dust out of our clothes. When we said Africa he looked offended and tickled too. Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything."
— Alice Walker (The Color Purple)

"A grown child is a dangerous thing."
— Alice Walker (The Color Purple)

"Some colored people so scared of whitefolks they claim to love the cotton gin."
— Alice Walker (The Color Purple)

"When we become expert in something, our tastes grow more esoteric and complex."
— Malcolm Gladwell (Blink)

"The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life."
— Thich Nhat Hanh

"A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if no man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquillity of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved, Caesar would have spared his country, America would have been discovered more gradually, and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed."
— Mary Shelley

"Devil, do you dare approach me? and do you not fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head?"
— Mary Shelley (Frankenstein)

"Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful."
— Mary Shelley (Frankenstein)

"When you see yourself doing something badly and nobody's bothering to tell you anymore, that's a bad place to be. You may not want to hear it, but your critics are often the ones telling you they still love you and care about you, and want to make you better."
— Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)

"Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense? The commonest sense is the sense of men asleep, which they express by snoring."
— Henry David Thoreau

"Like every child, I adored her. Until I formed a brain and got to know her."
— Augusten Burroughs (Possible Side Effects)

"The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away. Puzzling."
— Robert M. Pirsig

"When one person suffers from a delusion, it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called a Religion."
— Robert M. Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values)

"The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there."
— Robert M. Pirsig

"The champagne was dead. So it goes."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five)

"Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why."
— Kurt Vonnegut

""You're not going to get any true confessions out of me," she said. "I'm a Leo, and our thing is changing the subject.""
— Ira Levin (The Stepford Wives)