"I regret nothing. There have been things I missed, but I ask no questions, because I have loved it, such as it has been, even the moments of emptiness, even the unanswered-and that I loved it, that is the unanswered in my life."
— Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead)

"Between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four, foreplay changes from being something that boys want to do and girls don't, to something that women want and men can't be bothered with. ... The perfect match, if you ask me, is between the Cosmo woman and the fourteen-year old boy."
— Nick Hornby

"If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier."
— Nick Hornby (High Fidelity)

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? "
— Nick Hornby

"I chose not to choose life: I chose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who need reasons when you've got heroin?"
— Mark Renton (Trainspotting)

"You can't lie to your soul."
— Irvine Welsh (Porno)

"The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, and mint, mint, everything smelling of mint, and one fine old tree that I loved to sit under on those cool perfect starry California October nights unmatched anywhere in the world."
— Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)

"And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhat far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded - at least that's what I thought then."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road: The Original Scroll)

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."
— Dr. Seuss

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."
— Elbert Hubbard

"Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none."
— William Shakespeare (All's Well That Ends Well)

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

"[...] the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany?"
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."
— Jack Kerouac

"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."
— Jack Kerouac

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."
— Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)

"My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them."
— Jack Kerouac

"Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry."
— Jack Kerouac

"Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream"
— Jack Kerouac

"The only truth is music"
— Jack Kerouac

"There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road: The Original Scroll)

"Life must be rich and full of loving--it's no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone."
— Jack Kerouac (Kerouac: Selected Letters: Volume 1 1940-1956)

"Something good will come of all things yet"
— Jack Kerouac

"Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH..."
— Jack Kerouac

"the road is life"
— Jack Kerouac

"Choose a life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers... Choose DSY and wondering who the fuck you are on a Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit crushing game shows, stucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away in the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourself, choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?"
— Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting)

"Girls have to go somewhere dangerous every now and then just so they know they can find their way home."
— Nicole Blackman

" Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as mere consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship."
— Nick Hornby (High Fidelity: A Novel)

"The trouble with my generation is that we all think we're fucking geniuses. Making something isn't good enough for us, and neither is selling something, or teaching something, or even just doing something; we have to be something."
— Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down)