"[...] 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)

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

"You must write for children the same way you write for adults, only better."
— Maxim Gorky

"When everything is easy one quickly gets stupid."
— Maxim Gorky

"We use words to understand each other and even, sometimes, to find each other."
— José Saramago

"The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware."
— Henry Miller

"Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music-the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself."
— Henry Miller

"Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am."
— Henry Miller (Stand Still Like the Hummingbird)

"Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn't matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one."
— Henry Miller

"Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war."
— Henry Miller (Tropic of Cancer)

"Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men."
— Joseph Conrad

"We live as we dream--alone...."
— Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness)

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes."
— Marcel Proust

"The jungle is dark but full of diamonds, Willy."
— Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman)

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."
— T.S. Eliot

"Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old."
— Franz Kafka

"There is no pain compared to that of loving a woman who makes her body accessible to one and yet who is incapable of delivering her true self -- because she does not know where to find it."
— Lawrence Durrell

"Does not everything depend on our interpretation of the silence around us?"
— Lawrence Durrell

"I had become, with the approach of night, once more aware of loneliness and time - those two companions without whom no journey can yield us anything. "
— Lawrence Durrell

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus

"Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot."
— D.H. Lawrence

"In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
— George Orwell

"A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool."
— William Shakespeare (As You Like It)

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

""Keep reading books, but remember that a book’s only a book, and you should learn to think for yourself."
"
— Maxim Gorky

"Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love."
— Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)

"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
— Hermann Hesse

"People with courage and character always seem sinister to the rest."
— Hermann Hesse

"I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over."
— Henrik Johan Ibsen

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between."
— Oscar Wilde

"My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see."
— Joseph Conrad (Lord Jim)

"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring--it was peace."
— Milan Kundera