"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. "
— René Descartes

"The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries."
— René Descartes

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

"Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them."
— William Shakespeare (Twelfth Night)

"Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind."
— William Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream)

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."
— William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

"The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid."
— Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey)

"A feminist is anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men."
— Gloria Steinem

"Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning."
— Gloria Steinem

"The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."
— Gloria Steinem

"Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise."
— Margaret Atwood

"I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most."
— Margaret Atwood

"I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary."
— Margaret Atwood

"Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it."
— Margaret Atwood (The Handmaid's Tale)

"None of us really changes over time. We only become more fully what we are."
— Anne Rice (The Vampire Lestat)

"Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult."
— Anne Rice (Interview With the Vampire)

"There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles."
— Anne Rice ( Servant of the Bones )

"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all."
— Emily Dickinson

"That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet."
— Emily Dickinson

"If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that it is poetry."
— Emily Dickinson

"If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain.
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain."
— Emily Dickinson

"Nature is a haunted house--but Art--is a house that tries to be haunted."
— Emily Dickinson (The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)

"The dearest ones of time, the strongest friends of the soul--BOOKS."
— Emily Dickinson

"Beauty is not caused. It is."
— Emily Dickinson

"Truth is so rare, it is delightful to tell it."
— Emily Dickinson

"It is the writer's privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart."
— William Faulkner

"Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."
— William Faulkner

"Wonder. Go on and wonder."
— William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury)

"Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth. "
— William Faulkner

"To See a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."
— William Blake

"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind."
— William Blake

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."
— William Blake (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

"A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent."
— William Blake

"The most sublime act is to set another before you."
— William Blake

"A man can't soar too high, when he flies with his own wings."
— William Blake

"He who kisses joy as it flies by will live in eternity's sunrise."
— William Blake

"Good books don't give up all their secrets at once."
— Stephen King

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."
— Stephen King

"The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance...logic can be happily tossed out the window."
— Stephen King

"The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a tellar but for want of an understanding ear."
— Stephen King (Different Seasons)

"Books are the perfect entertainment: no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn't carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life."
— Stephen King

"Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you'll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding."
— Stephen King

"Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

"Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s."
— Stephen King (On Writing)

"Never leave a friend behind. Friends are all we have to get us through this life--and they are the only things from this world that we could hope to see in the next."
— Dean Koontz (Fear Nothing)

"Change isn't easy... changing the way you live means changing what you believe about life. That's hard... When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable."
— Dean Koontz

"The heart is an artist that paints over what profoundly disturbs it, leaving on the canvas a less dark, less sharp version of the truth."
— Dean Koontz (Forever Odd)

"If we were always conscious of the fact that people precious to us are frighteningly mortal, hanging not even by a thread, but by a wisp of gossamer, perhaps we would be kinder to them and more grateful for the love and friendship they give to us."
— Dean Koontz (Seize the Night)

"The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it."
— Flannery O'Connor

"Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of the universe."
— Flannery O'Connor