"People who claim they're evil are usually no worse than the rest of us. It's people who claim that they're good, or any way better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of. "
— Gregory Maguire (Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West)

"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)

"If you do something too good, then, after a while, if you don't watch it, you start showing off. And then you're not as good any more."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
— Mahatma Gandhi (An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth)

"I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; and because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something that I can do."
— Edward Everett Hale

"We've been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope. But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.
"
— Barack Obama

"Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book."
— Jane Smiley (13 Ways of Looking at the Novel)

"I believe in the baby Jesus, and I believe he is handsome and lives in the sky with his pet cow. I believe that it is essential the cow like you, and if you pet the cow with your mind, it will lick your hand and give you cash. But if you make the cow angry, it will turn away from you, forget you exist, and your life will fall into shambles. I believe that as long as the cow likes you, you can get what you want. In order to keep the cow’s favor, you need to ‘let go and let God,’ meaning you can’t obsess about controlling every little thing. You have to let things unfold naturally, and not try to change things you cannot change. On the other hand, I believe that if you’ve made the cow happy by living this way, you’re allowed to ask for favors..."
— Augusten Burroughs (Magical Thinking)

"The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start."
— John Bingham (No Need for Speed: A Beginner's Guide to the Joy of Running)

"God loves you just the way you are, but He refuses to leave you that way. He wants you to be just like Jesus. "
— Max Lucado

"Forgiveness is unlocking the door to set someone free and realising you were the prisoner!"
— Max Lucado

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
— C.S. Lewis

"Art and life are subjective. Not everybody's gonna dig what I dig, but I reserve the right to dig it. "
— Whoopi Goldberg

"My mother always called me 'sturdy' and said I have big bones. A little fat is what I am."
— Andy Rooney

"Writers don't often say anything that readers don't already know, unless its a news story. A writer's greatest pleasure is revealing to people things they knew but did not know they knew. Or did not realize everyone else knew, too. This produces a warm sense of fellow feeling and is the best a writer can do."
— Andy Rooney

"I'm always on the lookout for something good about people. Often months go by."
— Andy Rooney

"The trouble with dictionaries is, they tell you more about words than you want to know without answering the question you have."
— Andy Rooney

"I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing
than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance"
— e.e. cummings

"Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work."
— Oswald Chambers

"Our natural virtues can never come anywhere near what Jesus Christ wants."
— Oswald Chambers

"The non-fiction bestseller lists frequently prove that we all want to know more about everything, even if we didn't know that we wanted to know - we're just waiting for the right person to come along and tell us about it."
— Nick Hornby

"I lost the plot for a while then. And I lost the subplot, the script, the soundtrack, the intermission, my popcorn, the credits, and the exit sign."
— Nick Hornby (High Fidelity: A Novel)

"Embrace your solitude and love it. Endure the pain it causes, and try to sing out with it. For those near to you are distant..."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

"...it's no use trying to pretend that mostpeople and ourselves are alike. Mostpeople have less in common with ourselves than thesquarerootofminusone. You and I are human beings; mostpeople are snobs."
— e.e. cummings

"When confusion reigns
and the waitress begins to think
that the hungry exists for her,
and the air hostess begins to think
that the passengers exist for her,
and the pharmacist begins to think
that the patient exists for her,
and the reviewer begins to think
that the author exists for her-
and not the other way about:

When confusion reigns
I too, my love, begin to think
that you were made for me."
— Nino Nokolov

"The one thing that remains is looking in the face of God for ourselves."
— Oswald Chambers (My Utmost for His Highest Updated Edition)

"The devil can't make me do anything when I'm calling on Jesus Christ."
— Sara Groves

"Rabo Karabekian: I'm in the middle of a sentence.
Circe Berman: Who isn't?."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Bluebeard)

"Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard to be misinformed."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Bluebeard)

"A lot of people were opposed to it. A lot of people were for it. I myself think about it as little as possible."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Bluebeard)

"I could go on to speak of sanity as compared with insanity, decency as compared with vandalism, friendship as compared with rabies."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Bluebeard)

"The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go."
— Theodore Roethke

"Jesus called fishermen, not graduates of rabbinical schools. The main requirement was to be natural and sincere."
— Jim Cymbala (Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire)

"No matter what I preach or what we claim to believe in our heads, the future will depend upon our times of prayer."
— Jim Cymbala (Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire)

"Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings."
— William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

"It is a safe thing to trust Him to fulfill the desires which He creates"
— Amy Carmichael

""The tarter the apple, the tastier the cider.""
— Beverly Lewis (The Revelation)

"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

"'I want an Oompa-Loompa!' screamed Veruca."
— Roald Dahl (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

"We are so limited, you have to use the same word for loving Rosaleen as you do for loving Coke with peanuts. Isn't that a shame we don't have many more ways to say it?"
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

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

"The bond between friends cannot be broken by chance; no interval of time or space can destroy it. Not even death itself can part true friends."
— John Cassian