"Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on."
— Henry Rollins

"If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that."
— Stephen King

"When his life was ruined, his family killed, his farm destroyed, Job knelt down on the ground and yelled up to the heavens, "Why god? Why me?" and the thundering voice of God answered, There's just something about you that pisses me off."
— Stephen King (Storm of the Century: An Original Screenplay)

"Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule."
— Stephen King

"Lots of people talk to animals...Not very many listen though...that's the problem."
— Benjamin Hoff (The Tao of Pooh)

"Everyday is a bank account, and time is our currency. No one is rich, no one is poor, we've got 24 hours each."
— Christopher Rice

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."
— John Steinbeck

"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."
— John Steinbeck

"I guess there are never enough books."
— John Steinbeck

"Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance."
— John Steinbeck

"Life is like a novel. Its filled with suspense. You have no idea what is going to happen until you turn the page."
— Sidney Sheldon

"I'm right and you're wrong, I'm big and you're small, and there's nothing you can do about it."
— Roald Dahl (Matilda)

"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 have a passion for teaching kids to become readers, to become comfortable with a book, not daunted. Books shouldn't be daunting, they should be funny, exciting and wonderful; and learning to be a reader gives a terrific advantage."
— Roald Dahl

"Two rights don't equal a left."
— Roald Dahl (The BFG)

"Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear."
— Judy Blume

"Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you are two steps ahead."
— Fannie Flagg (Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe: A Novel)

"...it's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept. And then you start to hurry. You work faster and faster and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop--and still the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it.

You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else.

That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that's how it ought to be.

And all at once, before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. what's more, you aren't out of breath. That's important, too... (28-29)"
— Michael Ende (Momo)

"And if someone felt that his life had been an utter failure, and that he himself was only one among millions of wholly unimportant people who could be replaced as easily as broken windowpanes, he would go and pour out his heart to Momo. And, even as he spoke, he would come to realize by some mysterious means that he was absolutely wrong: that there was only one person like himself in the whole world, and that, consequently, he mattered to the world in his own particular way.

Such was Momo's talent for listening."
— Michael Ende

"If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless.

If such things have not been part of your own experience, you probably won't understand what Bastian did next."
— Michael Ende (The Neverending Story)

"People never seemed to notice that, by saving time, they were losing something else. No one cared to admit that life was becoming ever poorer, bleaker and more monotonous. The ones who felt this most keenly were the children, because no one had time for them anymore. But time is life itself, and life resides in the human heart. And the more people saved, the less they had. "
— Michael Ende

""What will happen when my heart stops beating?" Momo asked.
"When that moment comes," said the professor, "time will stop for you as well. Or rather, you will retrace your steps through time, through all the days and nights, myths and years of your life, until you go out through the great, round, silver gate you entered by."
"What will I find on the other side?"
"The home of the music you've sometimes faintly heard in the distance, but by then you'll be part of it. You yourself will be a note in its mighty harmonies.""
— Michael Ende

"An eternity of wishing to speak directly to my Creator - I thought in despair - and this is how He finally contacts me? Through AOL Instant Messenger?"
— A.M. Jenkins (Repossessed)

"I know God won't give me anything I can't handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much."
— Mother Teresa

"In heaven, all the interesting people are missing."
— Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Yes, reason has been a part of organized religion, ever since two nudists took dietary advice from a talking snake."
— Jon Stewart

"God is a concept by which we measure our pain."
— John Lennon

"Just because you're beautiful and perfect, it's made you conceited."
— William Goldman (The Princess Bride)

"What have you been reading, The Gospel according to St. Bastard?!"
— Eddie Izzard

"The one thing I remember about Christmas was that my father used to take me out in a boat about ten miles offshore on Christmas Day, and I used to have to swim back. Extraordinary. It was a ritual.
Mind you, that wasn't the hard part. The difficult bit was getting out of the sack."
— John Cleese

"So the American government lied to the Native Americans for many, many years, and then President Clinton lied about a
relationship, and everyone was surprised! A little naïve, I feel!"
— Eddie Izzard

"cake or death?"
— Eddie Izzard

"They say that "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Well I think the gun helps. If you just stood there and yelled BANG, I don't think you'd kill too many people."
— Eddie Izzard

"It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything. "
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)

"Today is the sort of day where the sun only comes up to humiliate you."
— Chuck Palahniuk

"You are not your job, you're not how much money you have in the bank. You are not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You are not your fucking khakis. You are all singing, all dancing crap of the world."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"This is your life and its ending one moment at a time."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"You know how they say you only hurt the ones you love? Well, it works both ways."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club: A Novel)

"We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."
— Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
— Dante Alighieri (Inferno)

"Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.
All hope abandon, ye who enter here."
— Dante Alighieri (The Divine Comedy)

"The path to paradise begins in hell."
— Dante Alighieri

"No one understands and appreciates the American Dream of hard work leading to material rewards better than a non-American. "
— Anthony Bourdain (Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly)

"I don't have to agree with you to like you or respect you."
— Anthony Bourdain

"For the first time in nearly twenty-five years, our country is having anything to do with the Chinamen, an it is an event far more important than any damn ping-pong game. It is diplomacy, and the future of the human race might be at stake. Do you understand what I am saying?"

I shrug my shoulders an nod my head, but something down in me sinkin' fast. I am jus' a po' ole idiot, an now I have got the whole human race to look after."
— Winston Groom

"Mama read it an began pulling her hair an weepin an praisin the Lord, 'cause it say I am 'Temporarily Deferred' on account of I am a numbnuts."
— Winston Groom (Forrest Gump)

"But isn't the knowledge that comes from experience more valuable than the knowledge that doesn't? It seems fairly obvious to some of us that a lot of scholars need to go outside and sniff around - walk through the grass, talk to the animals. That sort of thing."
— Benjamin Hoff (The Tao of Pooh)

"Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it."
— Frances Hodgson Burnett (A Little Princess)

"Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book. People who are fond of books know the feeling of irritation which sweeps over them at such a moment. The temptation to be unreasonable and snappish is one not easy to manage.

"It makes me feel as if something had hit me," Sara had told Ermengarde once in confidence. "And as if I want to hit back. I have to remember things quickly to keep from saying something ill-tempered."
— Frances Hodgson Burnett (A Little Princess)