"The things that make us happy make us wise. "
— John Crowley (Little, Big)

"Perhaps you are thinking: 'But a tank costs several million dollars, not including floor mats. I don't have that kind of money.'
Don't be silly. You're a consumer, right? You have credit cards, right?
Perhaps you are thinking: 'Yes, but how am I going to pay the credit-card company?'
Don't be silly. You have a tank, right?"
— Dave Barry

"'It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever,' he said. 'Have you thought of going into teaching?'"
— Terry Pratchett (Mort)

"Stupid, Stupid Rat Creatures! "
— Jeff Smith

"I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones)

"By now, it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer's greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of this books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus, we get a kickback from the caffeine industry..."
— Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians)

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
— Mark Twain

""Acquire knowledge. It enables its possessor to distinguish right from wrong. It lights the way to heaven. It is our friend in the desert, our society in solitude, our compassion when friendless. It guides us to happiness. It sustains us in misery. It is an ornament among friends and an armor against enemies.""
— Muhammad

"It is not enough to simply teach children to read;
we have to give them something worth reading.
Something that will stretch their imaginations-
something that will help them make sense of their own lives
and encourage them to reach out toward people
whose lives are quite different from their own."
— Katherine Paterson

"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it."
— Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment)

"Inspiration usually comes during work rather than before it."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown"
— H.P. Lovecraft

"Most people don't realize how important librarians are. I ran across a book recently which suggested that the peace and prosperity of a culture was solely related to how many librarians it contained. Possibly a slight overstatement. But a culture that doesn't value its librarians doesn't value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?"
— Neil Gaiman

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

"Well-read people are less likely to be criminals."
— Lemony Snicket

"That pompous phrase (graphic novel) was thought up by some idiot in the marketing department of DC. I prefer to call them Big Expensive Comics."
— Alan Moore

"I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any thinking going on inside it."
— Terry Pratchett

"Lots of people hate gay people.
You can tell who they are because they start sentences with, "It's not like I hate gay people.""
— Ali Liebegott

"I always loved English because whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we think we are. English is much more a story of who we really are."
— Nikki Giovanni

"Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!"
— H.P. Lovecraft

"A man of my acquaintance once wrote a poem called "The Road Less Traveled", describing a journey he took through the woods along a path most travelers never used. The poet found that the road less traveled was peaceful but quite lonely, and he was probably a bit nervous as he went along, because if anything happened on the road less traveled, the other travelers would be on the road more frequently traveled and so couldn't hear him as he cried for help. Sure enough, that poet is dead."
— Lemony Snicket (The Slippery Slope)

"I think you should know that real-life white people are not all as funny as the ones on "Seinfeld.""
— Aaron McGruder

"Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck."
— Joss Whedon

"Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can. Of course, I could be wrong."
— Terry Pratchett

"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."
— William James

"The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it."
— William James

"You wouldn't recognize a cunning plan if it painted itself blue and danced around naked singing 'cunning plans are here again'."
— Cassandra Clare

"I'm 17 years old. I'm not a straight-A student or anything. Even so, I figured out how to make an Internet that they can't wiretap. I figured out how to jam their person-tracking technology. I can turn innocent people into suspects and turn guilty people into innocents in their eyes. I could get metal onto an airplane or beat a no-fly list. I figured this stuff out by looking at the web and by thinking about it. If I can do it, terrorists can do it. They told us they took away our freedom to make us safe. Do you feel safe?"
— Cory Doctorow

"You must remember, family is often born of blood, but it doesn't depend on blood. Nor is it exclusive of friendship. Family members can be your best friends, you know. And best friends, whether or not they are related to you, can be your family."
— Trenton Lee Stewart (The Mysterious Benedict Society)

"Every great thinker keeps a journal, you know."
— Trenton Lee Stewart (The Mysterious Benedict Society)

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye."
— Miss Piggy

"The first words that are read by seekers of enlightenment in the secret, gong-banging, yeti-haunted valleys near the hub of the world, are when they look into The Life of Wen the Eternally Surprised.

The first question they ask is: 'Why was he eternally surprised?'

And they are told: 'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.'

The first words read by the young Lu-Tze when he sought perplexity in the dark, teeming, rain-soaked city of Ankh-Morpork were: 'Rooms For Rent, Very Reasonable'. And he was glad of it. "
— Terry Pratchett (Thief of Time)

"Witches are naturally nosy,” said Miss Tick, standing up. “Well, I must go. I hope we shall meet again. I will give you some free advice, though.”
“Will it cost me anything?”
“What? I just said it was free!” said Miss Tick.
“Yes, but my father said that free advice often turns out to be expensive,” said Tiffany.
Miss Tick sniffed. “You could say this advice is priceless,” she said, “Are you listening?”
“Yes,” said Tiffany.
“Good. Now...if you trust in yourself...”
“Yes?”
“...and believe in your dreams...”
“Yes?”
“...and follow your star...” Miss Tick went on.
“Yes?”
“...you’ll still be beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. Goodbye."
— Terry Pratchett (The Wee Free Men)

"Children are not less intelligent than adults; what they are is less informed."
— Philip Pullman

"Ideas are bulletproof."
— Alan Moore (V for Vendetta)

"People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict."
— Lemony Snicket (The Grim Grotto)

"All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk."
— Lemony Snicket

"A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded."
— Lemony Snicket (Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid)

"The burning of a book is a sad, sad sight, for even though a book is nothing but ink and paper, it feels as if the ideas contained in the book are disappearing as the pages turn to ashes and the cover and binding--which is the term for the stitching and glue that holds the pages together--blacken and curl as the flames do their wicked work. When someone is burning a book, they are showing utter contempt for all of the thinking that produced its ideas, all of the labor that went into its words and sentences, and all of the trouble that befell the author . . . "
— Lemony Snicket (The Penultimate Peril)

"My business in life is to eat, drink, sleep, and die. Everything else is superfluity and I will have none of it. "
— Wilkie Collins (Dead Secret)

"I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise."
— Wilkie Collins (The Woman in White)

"Ignorance is ultimately the worst enemy of a people who want to be free."
— Jonathan Hennessey (The United States Constitution: A Graphic Adaptation)

"The cure for boredom is curiosity.
There is no cure for curiosity."
— Dorothy Parker

"I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it."
— Dorothy Parker

"I hate writing, I love having written."
— Dorothy Parker

"Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song;
a medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
and I am Marie of Romania."
— Dorothy Parker

"Remember; no matter how desperate the situation seems, time spent
thinking clearly is never time wasted."
— Max Brooks (The Zombie Survival Guide)

"What I say is, a town isn't a town without a bookstore. It may call itself a town, but unless it's got a bookstore it knows it's not fooling a soul."
— Neil Gaiman (American Gods)

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe."
— Neil Gaiman (The Sandman Vol. 5: A Game of You)