"....he said it was interesting. He used the word 'textured'. He said 'smooth' is boring but 'textured' was interesting, and the scar meant that I was stronger than whatever had tried to hurt me."
— Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle: A Memoir)

"No one expected you to amount to much," she told me. "Lori was the smart one, Maureen the pretty one, and Brian the brave one. You never had much going for you except that you always worked hard."
— Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle: A Memoir)

"...,we wasn't born to be all the time scared, we was born happy,"
— Dean Koontz (Brother Odd)

"Boo fell in at my side. He is the only ghost dog I have ever seen. Animals always move on. For some reason he had lingered more than a year at the abbey. Perhaps waiting for me."
— Dean Koontz (Brother Odd)

"You still love me - even if there's one expression of it that you will always feel and want, but will not give me no longer. I'm still what I was, and you'll always see it, and you'll always grant me the same response, even if there's a greater one that you grant another man. No matter what you feel for him, it will not change what you feel for me, and it won't treason to either, because it comes from the same root, it's the same payment in answer to the same values."
— Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)

"Books were this wonderful escape for me because I could open a book and disappear into it, and that was the only way out of that house when I was a kid. "
— Dean Koontz

"Life, Stormy says, is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It's about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what."
— Dean Koontz

"Fresh start. Day two, socks around my ankles, way down, two Maori boys approached me before I could get to my desk. Probelm solved. That day and in the many enjoyable ones that followed, my classmates asked me dozen of questions about America, while detailing essential subjects for a New Zealand boy in 1976, including lollies, meat pies and chips, cricket and rugby, ABBA and Tintin comic books, and why their relatives with tattoos on their face did that funy dance while sticking out their tounges."
— Franz Wisner (Honeymoon with My Brother: A Memoir)

""How long's your vacation?"
"A year. Maybe longer."
"A year? What did you do? Win the lottery?"
Most americans we met on the road, or at least the ones without nose rings, had a hard time fathoming the idea of a year's travel. Australians and Germans would nod in "of course" approval. Our country men would fixate on language barriers or some hideous tropical disease. They'd talk about the nightmare scenario - a Third World appendectomy and not being able to tell the doctor to use clean needles."
— Franz Wisner (Honeymoon with My Brother: A Memoir)

"Watching it all, I had a panic attack.
Holy shit! Most of the Thirld World sees America through the actions of backpackers. They're our diplomats in places like this. Our grungy kissingers. These folks must think we're all drawstring pant-wearing, Hacky-Sacking, white Rasta freaks. We're doomed."
— Franz Wisner (Honeymoon with My Brother: A Memoir)

"Some would ask what country am I from? We ara supposed to tell the truth, [so] we tell them India. Some thought it was Indiana, not India! Some did not know where India is. I said the country next to Pakistan."
— Thomas L. Friedman (The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century)

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square hole. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
— Apple Computer Inc.

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

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
— Albert Einstein

"If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything."
— Malcolm X

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I love mankind, it's people I can't stand."
— Charles M. Schulz

"Even more, I had never meant to love him. One thing I truly knew - knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest - was how love gave someone the power to break you.
I'd been broken beyond repair."
— Stephenie Meyer (New Moon)

"But I know what I like.' She smiled, and et the cat drop to the floor. 'It's like Tiffany's,'she said. 'Not that I give a hoot about jewellery. Diamonds, yes. But it's tacky to wear diamonds before you're forty; and even that's risky."
— Truman Capote (Breakfast at Tiffany's: A Short Novel and Three Stories)

"The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of."
— Breakfast At Tiffany's

"In his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, the eighteenth-century British historian Edward Gibbon describes the scene of Romans fleeing the city of Nisibis in A.D. 363 after it was handed over to the Persians......Gibbon could have been describing a photograph from the 1994 genocide in Rawanda or the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. He could have been describing any number of forced migrations that have occurred all over the world in the last ten years, even the last five. The picture has not changed much since the fourth century.

"
— Charles London (One Day the Soldiers Came: Voices of Children in War)

"From birth to age eighteen a girl needs good parents. From eighteen to thirty-five she needs good looks. From thirty-five to fifty-five she needs a good personality. From fifty-five on she needs cash."
— Sophie Tucker

"If I had kept my life simple - not moved to a big house with a big overhead and a lot of maintenance."
— Lois P. Frankel (Nice Girls Don't Get Rich: 75 Avoidable Mistakes Women Make with Money)

"and standing before me a bloodied bottle of Absolut in her hand, is Mrs. Allington, her pink jogging suit drenched, her chest heaving, her eyes filled with contempt as she stared down at Rachel's prone body. Mrs. Allington shakes her head. "I'm a size twelve," she says."
— Meg Cabot (Size 12 Is Not Fat)

"Learning money basics.

Don't marry for money. You can borrow it cheaper."
— Lois P. Frankel (Nice Girls Don't Get Rich: 75 Avoidable Mistakes Women Make with Money)

"The most foolish thing I've ever done related to money was spend too much of my life worrying about whether I had enough or didn't have enough, I always felt I never had enough. I cheated myselfout of living in the moment, and I'll bet I die with a lot left over."
— Lois P. Frankel (Nice Girls Don't Get Rich: 75 Avoidable Mistakes Women Make with Money)

"No one can take better care of you than you yourself."
— Lois P. Frankel (Nice Girls Don't Get Rich: 75 Avoidable Mistakes Women Make with Money)

"Iwent to school with African-American girls during my entire adolescence in Michigan and never noticed them as potential girlfriends, never even wanted to meet them. How did that happen? I'm nine thousand miles from home and a pernicious wall of segregation I never noticed in high school suddenly materialises. A young man should travel."
— Kenneth Cain (Emergency Sex)

"Be careful, he says, the official US position will be that they refuse to negotiate for hostages, but they may try to enlist the U.N. to do it."
— Kenneth Cain (Emergency Sex)

"He did well, but he couln't afford the blood for a transfusion."
— Andrew Thomson (Emergency Sex)

"I'm not convinced that it's worth it. How many Cambodians ever asked for a $2 billion election? Nighty percent of them are rice farmers. I lived with them, watched them die at the hospital, and never was the word "election" mentioned. That money would repair hundreds of roads and bridges and pay for tons of seed and fertilizer. And clear a lot of landmines."
— Andrew Thomson (Emergency Sex)

"If blue helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run."
— Andrew Thomson (Emergency Sex)

"You can't change the world by saving one animal. But you can change the world for that one animal."
— Ester Honey Foundation Cook Islands

"Did she ever regret her choices? Were her decisions more clear-cut than mine - or are there always shades of gray whe it comes to matters of the heart?"
— Emily Giffin (Love the One You're With)

"Instead of relief or gratitude, more guilt washes over me. Andy's certainly not faultless - no one ever is in a marriage"
— Emily Giffin (Love the One You're With)

"How different this moment feels, for so many reasons. I tell myself that no two loves are identical - but that I don't have to compare anymore."
— Emily Giffin (Love the One You're With)

"Also, I think I felt something come loose back there. I'm not trying to overreact or anything but I think it was my uterus. Honest. I think my uterus jiggled free. My uterus is just going to come out between my legs and I'm going to look like I'm walking around with an enormous load in my pants."
— Meg Cabot (Big Boned)

"I stare at her, as dumbstruck as if she'd just admitted she's a Scientologist with an invitation to join Tom and Katie on the spaceship when it shows up."
— Meg Cabot (Big Boned)

""I don't want water!" Sarah cries, her face buried against my chest.
I can't see what's going on in the rest of the lobby beacuse Sarah's hair is flying up in my face, blocking my view.
"I want justice!" she wails.
"Well, we'll get you some of that too." Magda has appeared from out of nowhere. "Maybe there's some in the freezer.""
— Meg Cabot (Big Boned)

"They've arrested Sebastian! For m-murder! You've g-got to stop them! He d-didn't do it! He can't have done it! He doesn't believe in murder! He's a v-vegetarian!"
— Meg Cabot (Big Boned)

"As long as I have laughter, I am not without hope"
— Dean Koontz

"I know it's hard being a single mother baby, he said, but we're talking fundamentals here. Homemade cookies are one of the best parts of christmas. It's an absolute fundamental."
— Dean Koontz (Strangers)

"For a better part of a decade, he had been outside society, distanced in mind and spirit if not in body. But now, for the first time since Centeral America, Jack Twist had the need, the desire, and ability to reach out to society around him, to make friends."
— Dean Koontz (Strangers)

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

"Hefty? I'd railed to Peter, waving the clipping for emphasis. Hefty? For the record 'Hefty' is a trash bag. I'm festively plump."
— Jennifer Weiner (Certain Girls)

"And right then I realised that she was right. The good, the bad, that's just life. Let it go. There's no need to fret about the past. The question is: who are you going to share it with tomorrow?"
— Vicki Myron (Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World)

"For years, I thought I had done that for Dewey. I thought that was my story to tell. And I had done that. When Dewey was hurt, cold, and crying, I was there. I held him. I made sure everything was all right.
But that's only a sliver of the truth. The real truth is that for all those years, on the hard days, the good days, and all the unremembered days that make up the pages of the real book of our lives, Dewey was holding me."
— Vicki Myron (Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World)

"It's only life. We all get through it. Not all of us complete the journey in the same condition. Along the way, some lose their legs or eyes in acidents or altercations, while others skate through the years with nothing worse to worry about than an occassional bad-hair day.
I still possessed both legs and both eyes, and even my hair looked all right when I rose that Wednesday morning in late January. If I returned to bed sixteen hours later, having lost all my hair but nothing else, I would consider the day a triumph. Even minus a few teeth, I'd call it a triumph."
— Dean Koontz (Odd Hours)