"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"the way i see it, hard times aren't only about money, or drought, or dust. hard times are about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up."
— Karen Hesse (Out Of The Dust)

"So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall."
— Roald Dahl

"Good books are as friends, willing to give to us if we are willing to make a little effort."
— Gordon B. Hinckley

"Why was it that pride and foolishness were so often close companions?"
— Linda Sue Park (A Single Shard)

"You must remember, family is often born of blood, but it doesn't depend on blood. Nor is it exclusive of friendship. Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are related to you, can be your family."
— Trenton Lee Stewart (The Mysterious Benedict Society)

"You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"“If you take a book with you on a journey,” Mo had said when he put the first on in her box, “an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first word: the sights you saw in the places, what is smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it…yes, books are like flypaper-memories cling to the printed pages better than anything else.”"
— Cornelia Funke

""Secrets could never be rushed. They had to come of their own accord, on their own schedule. That way ,when they came , the offered themselves as a gift.""
— Donna Jo Napoli (Bound)