"Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light."
— Madeleine L'Engle (A Ring of Endless Light)

"Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
"
— Francis Bacon

"Hope. Nothing is more intoxicating."
— Cornelia Funke (Inkdeath)

"He was simply a perpetually happy person, and he carried that happiness with him like an aura, sharing it with whoever was near him. Like an earthbound sun, whenever someone was within his gravitational pull, he warmed them. It was natural, a part of who he was. No wonder I was so eager to see him."
— Stephanie Meyer

"He had once thought it was strange to have a friend you'd never met. Now it was even stranger, losing a friend you'd never really had"
— Tad Williams (City of Golden Shadow)

""Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to have to explain things to them always and forever." The Little Prince"
— Antoine de Saint Exupéry

"People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humor, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic."
— Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)

"There's lots of kinds of chains. You can't see most of them, the one's that bind folks together. But people build them, link by link. Sometimes the links are weak, snap like this one did. That's another funny thing, now that I think of it. Sometimes when you mend a chain, the place where you fix it is strongest of all."
— Bruce Coville (Into the Land of the Unicorns)

"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out"
— Walter Winchell

"It is not our abilities, but our actions that show us who we truly are."
— JK Rowling

"'I am looking for friends. What does that mean -- tame?'

'It is an act too often neglected,' said the fox. 'It means to establish ties.'

'To establish ties?'

'Just that,' said the fox. 'To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...'"
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Le Petit Prince)

"My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie."
— Diane Setterfield (The Thirteenth Tale)

"Every man is the hero of his own song."
— Tad Williams (Mountain of Black Glass)

"If we begin with certainties, we shall end in doubts; but if we begin with questions and are patient in them, we shall end in certainties. "
— Francis Bacon

"I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright,
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
And all her train were hurled."
— Madeleine L'Engle (A Ring of Endless Light)

"Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."
— William Blake (Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience)

"Never make your home in a place. Make a home for yourself inside your own head. You'll find what you need to furnish it- memory, friends you can trust, love of learning, and other such things. That way it will go with you wherever you journey."
— Tad Williams

"Here is my secret. It is very simple: One does not see well but with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eye.
(Chapter XXI-The Little Prince)"
— Anthony de Saint Exupery

"But on your tiny planet, my little prince, all you need do is move your chair a few steps. You can see the day end and the twilight falling whenever you like...

"One day," you said to me, "I saw the sunset forty-four times!"

And a little later you added: "You know, one loves the sunset, when one is so sad..." "Were you so sad, then?" I asked, "on the day of the forty-four sunsets?"

But the little prince made no reply."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (The Little Prince and "Letter to a Hostage ")

""Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted ...but to weigh and consider." "
— Francis Bacon

"You can never really know someone completely. That’s why it’s the most terrifying thing in the world, really—taking someone on faith, hoping they’ll take you on faith too. It’s such a precarious balance, It’s a wonder we do it at all. And yet..

"
— Libba Bray

"And that is how change happens. One gesture. One person. One moment at a time."
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
— Maya Angelou

"Digression is the soul of wit."
— Ray Bradbury

"Anything you dream is fiction, and anything you accomplish is science, the whole history of mankind is nothing but science fiction. "
— Ray Bradbury

"No one asks how or what I am doing. They could not care less. We’re all looking glasses, we girls, existing only to reflect their images back to them as they’d like to be seen. Hollow vessels of girls to be rinsed of our own ambitions, wants, and opinions, just waiting to be filled with the cool, tepid water of gracious compliance.
A fissure forms in the vessel. I’m cracking open.
--Libba Bray"
— Libba Bray

"Shall I tell you a story? A new and terrible one? A ghost story? Are you ready? Shall I begin? Once upon a time there were four girls. One was pretty. One was clever. One charming, and one...one was mysterious. But they were all damaged, you see. Something not right about the lot of them. Bad blood. Big dreams. Oh, I left that part out. Sorry, that should have come before. They were all dreamers, these girls. One by one, night after night, the girls came together. And they sinned. Do you know what that sin was? No one? Pippa? Ann? Their sin was that they believed. Believed they could be different. Special. They believed they could change what they were--damaged, unloved. Cast-off things. They would be alive, adored, needed. Necessary. But it wasn't true. This is a ghost story remember? A tragedy. They were misled. Betrayed by their own stupid hopes. Things couldn't be different for them, because they weren't special after all. So life took them, led them, and they went along, you see? They faded before their own eyes, till they were nothing more than living ghosts, haunting each other with what could be. With what can't be. There, now. Isn't that the scariest story you've ever heard?"
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right."
— Libba Bray

"The vicar, whose name is Reverend Waite, leads us in prayers that all begin with 'O Lord' and end with our somehow not being worthy-sinners who have always been sinners and will forever more be sinners until we die. It isn't the most optimistic outlook I've ever heard but we're encouraged to keep trying anyway."
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

"Heaven's brightest and best-loved angel, who was cast out for inspiring a rebellion against God. Having lost Heaven, Lucifer and his rebel angels vowed to continue fighting here on earth."
"I don't understand why he had to fight. He was already in heaven."
"True. But he wasn't content to serve. He wanted more."
"He had all he could ask for, didn't he?" Ann asks.
"Exactly." Miss Moore states. "He had to ask. He was dependent upon someone else's whim. It's a terrible thing to have no power of one's own. To be denied."
— Libba Bray (Rebel Angels)

"What if evil doesn't really exist? What if evil is something dreamed up by man, and there is nothing to struggle against except out own limitations? The constant battle between our will, our desires, and our choices?"
— Libba Bray (Rebel Angels)

""Do you ever feel that way?"
"Lonely?"
I search for the words. "Restless. As if you haven't really met yourself yet. As is you'd passed yourself once in the fog, and your heart leapt--'Ah! There I Am! I've been missing that piece!' But it happens too fast, and then that part of you disappears into the fog again. And you spend the rest of your days looking for it"
He nods, and I think he's appeasing me. I feel stupid of having said it. It's sentimental and true, and I've revealed a part of myself I shouldn't have.
"Do you know what I think?" Kartik says at last.
"What?"
"Sometimes, I think you can glimpse it in another.'"
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

"We're all strangers connected by what we reveal, what we share, what we take away--our stories. I guess that's what I love about books--they are thin strands of humanity that tether us to one another for a small bit of time, that make us feel less alone or even more comfortable with our aloneness, if need be."
— Libba Bray

""A place to keep all your secrets""
— Libba Bray (Rebel Angels)

"What Hamlet suffers from is a lack of zombies. Let us say Rosencrantz and Guildenstern show up—Ho-HO! Now you’ve got something that stirs the, um, something that stirs things that are stirrable. BOOM! A pack of ravenous flesh-eaters breaks open their heads and sucks out their eyeballs. No need for iambic pentameter because they are grunting, groaning annihilators of humanity with no time for meter. You’re not asleep in the back of English class anymore, are you? This is what I’m talking about. Zombies. Learn it, live it, love it.
"
— Libba Bray

"Why is it that some secrets can drown you while some pull you close to others in a way you never want to lose?"
— Libba Bray

"...I should never be left alone with my mind for too long."
— Libba Bray

"All morning, Spence has been a well-oiled machine of activity. Everyone doing her bit, quietly and efficiently. It's strange how deliberate people are after a death. All the indecision suddenly vanishes into clear, defined moments--changing the linens, choosing a dress or a hymn, the washing up, the muttering of prayers. All the small, simple, conscious acts of living a sudden defense against the dying we do every day."
— Libba Bray

"When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt"
— Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing)

""What happens if your choice is misguided,
You must try to correct it
But what if it’s too late? What if you can’t?
Then you must find a way to live with it."
"
— Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty)

""People aren't always what you want them to be""
— Libba Bray

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

"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

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."
— Oscar Wilde

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
— Oscar Wilde (Lady Windermere's Fan)