"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"Dream as if you will live forever; Live as if you will die today."
— James Dean

"The most Beautiful people are the ones that don't look like one race or even one sex"
— Francesca Lia Block

"You'll never find a rainbow if you're looking down"
— Charlie Chaplin

"We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"You always get weirdos like Edward who seem to attract women for some reason. If Edward wasn’t a fictional character and you met him in reality he is like one of those guys who would probably be an axe murderer or something."
— Stephenie Meyer (The Twilight Saga)

"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."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

"Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back."
— John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)

"Saying 'I notice you're a nerd' is like saying, 'Hey, I notice that you'd rather be intelligent than be stupid, that you'd rather be thoughtful than be vapid, that you believe that there are things that matter more than the arrest record of Lindsay Lohan. Why is that?' In fact, it seems to me that most contemporary insults are pretty lame. Even 'lame' is kind of lame. Saying 'You're lame' is like saying 'You walk with a limp.' Yeah, whatever, so does 50 Cent, and he's done all right for himself."
— John Green

"Wish on everything. Pink cars are good, especially old ones. And stars of course, first stars and shooting stars. Planes will do if they are the first light in the sky and look like stars. Wish in tunnels, holding your breath and lifting your feet off the ground. Birthday candles. Baby teeth."
— Francesca Lia Block

"Everything is an illusion; that is the whole thing about it - illusion, immitation, a mirage. It makes me too sad. Its having like a good dream, you know you are going to wake up."
— Francesca Lia Block

"Here you go on this long long dream. Don't even try to wake up. Just let it go on until it is over. You will learn many things. Just relax and observe because there is pain and that's it mostly and you aren't going to be able to escape no matter what. Eventually it will all be over anyway. Good luck."
— Francesca Lia Block

"Morning. Strawberry sky dusted with white winter powder sugar sun. And nobody to munch on it with"
— Francesca Lia Block (Missing Angel Juan)

"Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."
— Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto)

"Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like."
— Lemony Snicket

"Wicked people never have time for reading. It's one of the reasons for their wickedness."
— Lemony Snicket

"No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read."
— Lemony Snicket

"Taking one’s chances is like taking a bath, because sometimes you end up feeling comfortable and warm, and sometimes there is something terrible lurking around that you cannot see until it is too late and you can do nothing else but scream and cling to a plastic duck."
— Lemony Snicket

"A good library will never be too neat or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up late reading them."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"A passport, as I'm sure you know, is a document that one shows to government officials whenever one reaches a border between two countries, so that the official can learn who you are, where you were born, and how you look when photographed unflatteringly."
— Lemony Snicket

"All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk."
— Lemony Snicket

"Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night's sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"I will love you as the iceberg loves the ship, and the passengers love the lifeboat and the lifeboat loves the teeth of the sperm whale, and the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms."
— Lemony Snicket (The Beatrice Letters)

"I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but first impressions are often entirely wrong."
— Lemony Snicket (The Bad Beginning)

"There are two kinds of fears: rational and irrational- or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don't."
— Lemony Snicket

"...you know that a good, long session of weeping can often make you feel better, even if your circumstances have not changed one bit."
— Lemony Snicket (The Bad Beginning)

"Assumptions are dangerous things to make, and like all dangerous things to make -- bombs, for instance, or strawberry shortcake -- if you make even the tiniest mistake you can find yourself in terrible trouble. Making assumptions simply means believing things are a certain way with little or no evidence that shows you are correct, and you can see at once how this can lead to terrible trouble. For instance, one morning you might wake up and make the assumption that your bed was in the same place that it always was, even though you would have no real evidence that this was so. But when you got out of your bed, you might discover that it had floated out to sea, and now you would be in terrible trouble all because of the incorrect assumption that you'd made. You can see that it is better not to make too many assumptions, particularly in the morning."
— Lemony Snicket (The Austere Academy)

"Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women."
— Lemony Snicket

"They didn't understand it, but like so many unfortunate events in life, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't so."
— Lemony Snicket (The Bad Beginning)

"One of the world's most popular entertainments is a deck of cards, which contains thirteen each of four suits, highlighted by kings, queens and jacks, who are possibly the queen's younger, more attractive boyfriends."
— Lemony Snicket

"Stealing, of course, is a crime, and a very impolite thing to do. But like most impolite things, it is excusable under certain circumstances. Stealing is not excusable if, for instance, you are in a museum and you decide that a certain painting would look better in your house, and you simply grab the painting and take it there. But if you were very, very hungry, and you had no way of obtaining money, it would be excusable to grab the painting, take it to your house, and eat it."
— Lemony Snicket (The Wide Window)

"A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding--which is the term for the stitching and glue that holds the pages together--blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work. When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all of the labor that went into its words and sentences, and all of the trouble that befell the author . . . "
— Lemony Snicket (The Penultimate Peril)

"If you have ever lost a loved one, then you know exactly how it feels. And if you have not, then you cannot possibly imagine it."
— Lemony Snicket (The Bad Beginning)

"You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them."
— Ray Bradbury

"If we listened to our intellect we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go in business because we'd be cynical: "It's gonna go wrong." Or "She's going to hurt me." Or,"I've had a couple of bad love affairs, so therefore . . ." Well, that's nonsense. You're going to miss life. You've got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down."
— Ray Bradbury

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

It doesn't matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away. The difference between the man who just cuts lawns and a real gardener is in the touching, he said. The lawn-cutter might just as well not have been there at all; the gardener will be there a lifetime."
— Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)

"You must write every single day of your life... You must lurk in libraries and climb the stacks like ladders to sniff books like perfumes and wear books like hats upon your crazy heads... may you be in love every day for the next 20,000 days. And out of that love, remake a world."
— Ray Bradbury

"And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on."
— Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)

"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches."
— Ray Bradbury

"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."
— Ray Bradbury (Zen in the Art of Writing)

"Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories."
— Ray Bradbury

"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)

"I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited."
— Sylvia Plath

"Mad Girl's Love Song

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)"
— Sylvia Plath

"Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal."
— Neil Gaiman