"She wants to write stories that ignore borders between genres, between written and spoken, between highbrow literature and children's nursery rhymes, between New York and the imaginary village of Macondo, between the U.S. and Mexico. It's true, she wants the writers she admires to respect her work, but she also wants people who don't usually read books to enjoy these stories too. She doesn't want to write a book that a reader won't understand and would feel ashamed for not understanding.

(from the Introduction in 25th Anniversary Edition)"
— Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street)

"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 ")

"...we accept the love we think we deserve."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"That's right, I am a book kisser."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power."
— George Meredith (Diana of the Crossways)

"Love is so painful, how could you ever wish it on anybody? And love is so essential, how could you ever stand in its way?"
— David Levithan

"i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)"
— e.e. cummings

"No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond."
— C.S. Lewis

"What they don't understand about birthdays and what they never tell you is that when you've eleven, you're also ten, and nine, and eight, and seven, and six, and five, and four, and three, and two and one. And when you wake up on your eleventh birthday you expect to feel eleven, but you don't. You open your eyes and everything's just like yesterday, only it's today. And you are--underneath the year that make you eleven.
Like some days you might say something stupid, and that's the part of you that's still ten. Or maybe some days you might need to sit on your mama's lap because you're scared, and that's the part of you that's five. And maybe one day when you're all grown up maybe you will need to cry like if you're three, and that's okay. That's what I tell Mama when she's sad and needs to cry. Maybe she's feeling three.
Because the way you grow old is kind of like an onion or like the rings inside a tree truck or like my little wooden dolls that fit one inside the other, each year inside the next one. That's how being eleven years old is."
— Sandra Cisneros (Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories)

"He smiled understandingly- much more than understandingly. It was
one of those smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it,
that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced-
or seemed to face- the whole external world for an instant, and
then concentrated on you with an irresistable prejudice in your favour.
It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood,
believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself
and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that,
at your best, you hoped to convey."
— F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)

"So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"...And I thought about how many people have loved those songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs. I bet if I wrote one of them, I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope they feel it's enough. I really do because they've made me happy. And I'm only one person. "
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"I think that if I ever have kids, and they are upset, I won't tell them that people are starving in China or anything like that because it wouldn't change the fact that they were upset. And even if somebody else has it much worse, that doesn't really change the fact that you have what you have."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"I walked over to the hill where we used to go and sled. There were a lot of little kids there. I watched them flying. Doing jumps and having races. And I thought that all those little kids are going to grow up someday. And all of those little kids are going to do the things that we do. And they will all kiss someone someday. But for now, sledding is enough. I think it would be great if sledding were always enough, but it isn't."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
— Anaïs Nin

"Downtown. Lights on buildings and everything that makes you wonder. And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"and all the books you’ve read have been ready by other people. and all the songs you’ve loved have been heard by other people. and that girl that’s pretty to you is pretty to other people. and you know that if you looked at these facts when you were happy, you would feel great because you are describing “unity.” "
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

"I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why. Especially since I know that if they went to another school, the person who had their heart broken would have had their heart broken by somebody else, so why does it have to be so personal?"
— Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

"And I was crying for gravity. It had sent me down the stairs, and I'd thought that meant something, but maybe it was just the direction that all things tend to flow."
— Gabrielle Zevin (Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac)

"Here's to all the places we went. And all the places we'll go. And here's to me, whispering again and again and again and again: iloveyou"
— John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)

""And the moral of the story is that you don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.""
— John Green (An Abundance of Katherines)

"And then something invisible snapped insider her, and that which had come together commenced to fall apart."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

"He was gone, and I did not have time to tell him what I had just now realized: that I forgave him, and that she forgave us, and that we had to forgive to survive in the labyrinth. There were so many of us who would have to live with things done and things left undone that day. Things that did not go right, things that seemed okay at the time because we could not see the future. If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions. But we can’t know better until knowing better is useless. And as I walked back to give Takumi’s note to the Colonel, I saw that I would never know. I would never know her well enough to know her thoughts in those last minutes, would never know if she left us on purpose. But the not-knowing would not keep me from caring, and I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

"People, you'll find, aren't usually all good or bad. Sometimes they're just a little bit good and a whole lot bad. And sometimes they're mostly good with a dash of bad. And most of us, well, we fall in the middle somewhere."
— Gabrielle Zevin

"There will be other lives.
There will be other lives for nervous boys with sweaty palms, for bittersweet fumblings in the backseats of cars, for caps and gowns in royal blue and crimson, for mothers clasping pretty pearl necklaces around daughters' unlined necks, for your full name read aloud in an auditorium, for brand-new suitcases transporting you to strange new people in strange new lands.
And there will be other lives for unpaid debts, for one-night stands, for Prague and Paris, for painful shoes with pointy toes, for indecision and revisions.
And there will be other lives for fathers walking daughters down aisles.
And there will be other lives for sweet babies with skin like milk.
And there will be other lives for a man you don't recognize, for a face in a mirror that is no longer yours, for the funerals of intimates, for shrinking, for teeth that fall out, for hair on your chin, for forgetting everything. Everything.
Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human's life is a beautiful mess."
— Gabrielle Zevin (Elsewhere)

"No one actually needs another person or another person's love to survive. Love is when we have irrationally convinced ourselves that we do."
— Gabrielle Zevin (Elsewhere)

"I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"Poverty doesn’t give you strength or teach you lessons about perseverance. No, poverty only teaches you how to be poor."
— Sherman Alexie (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)

"Love stories are written in millimeters and milliseconds with a fast, dull pencil whose marks you can barely see, they are written in miles and eons with a chisel on the side of a mountiantop"
— Gabrielle Zevin (Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac)

"When I look at my room, I see a girl who loves books."
— John Green (Looking for Alaska)

"Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

"Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. 'Pooh?' he whispered.
'Yes, Piglet?'
'Nothing,' said Piglet, taking Pooh's hand. 'I just wanted to be sure of you.'"
— A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh)

"For most of history, Anonymous was a woman."
— Virginia Woolf

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
— Maya Angelou

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go..."
— Dr. Seuss

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
— Henry David Thoreau

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child. Listen to the don'ts. Listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me... Anything can happen, child. Anything can be."
— Shel Silverstein

"yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."
— James Joyce

"Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory."
— James Joyce (The Dead)

"CONJUGATE THIS

I cut class, you cut class, he, she, it cuts class. We cut class, they cut class. We all cut class. I cannot say this in Spanish because I did not go to Spanish today. Gracias a dios. Hasta luego."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"This is where you can find your soul if you dare. Where you can touch that part of you that you've never dared look at before. Do not come here and ask me to show you how to draw a face. Ask me to help you find the wind."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"I have never heard a more eloquent silence."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"My first class is biology. I can't find it and get my first demerit for wandering the hall. It is 8:50 in the morning. Only 699 days and 7 class periods until graduation."
— Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)

"When Eddie B. dared me to walk the net bridge over the Elijah Hatchett River where we'd seen an alligator and another kid got bit by a coral snake, I wasn't scared--I just didn't feel like doing it right then."
— Danette Haworth (Violet Raines Almost Got Struck by Lightning)

"When death captures me, he will feel my fist on his face."
— zusak knopf

"You know your problem, Quentin? You keep expecting people not to be themselves. I mean, I could hate you for being massively unpunctual and for never being interested in anything other than Margo Roth Spiegelman, and for, like, never asking me about how it's going with my girlfriend - but I don't give a shit, man, because you're you. My parents have a shit ton of black Santas, but that's okay. They're them. I'm too obsessed with a reference website to answer my phone sometimes when my friends call, or my girlfriend. That's okay, too. That's me. You like me anyway. And I like you. You're funny, and you're smart, and you may show up late, but you always show up eventually."
— John Green (Paper Towns)

"With you I'm useless with words. As if somehow I had to learn to speak all over again, as if the words I needed haven't been invented yet. "
— Sandra Cisneros (Woman Hollering Creek: And Other Stories)